The Frontier
by The Grandiloquent Demagogue
Summary: A story on the frontier of an Asteroids universe loosely based on "Festival Among the Rocks". Space is a much bleaker place than the brochures say...
1. An Introduction

Disclaimer: This story is loosely based on Luke Rounda's Asteroids fanfiction, "Festival Among the Rocks". However, it's so loosely based, it resembles the original work in nearly no way at all. This is based on an Asteroids universe that is a not so much of a dystopian future, but rather a depressing one.

Frontier Prospects

The night is young, the void is deep.

The frontier is smashed, the future is bleak.

Prospectors make shitty poets.

The writers were wrong. Space isn't the happy destination for a shiny, united human race. All a bunch of malarkey. Sure, there's less taxes and laws, less red tape, less idiotic armies running about gunning for you. Not that Earth is facing any large conflicts lately. But the frontier is a myth. I'm not a bold, impetuous, yet slightly gruff miner looking for the nearest motherlode. Ha! Like a regular shmill can, with all of the companies flying around with the stateart devices. Few will even find one claim in their life. 'Prospector' is a generalized, meaningless title, like 'colonist' or 'settler'. The only prospect you look out for is whoever pays the biggest bucks.

I could very well work for them- but as what? Automated systems mean that there's no need for anyone above bookkeeper. There's no need to run all the way out to the wilds for that line of work. Bureaucracy times a trillion back home. I don't even have to go to Earth, the orbital colonies and Mars would do as well. Hell, even Pluto's considered civilized now. I wouldn't do manual work in a rock mine, anyway. That's robot work. There's a hellalot of stones out here, but there's no future in working with them. And don't listen to Nomad, either. Asteroid-smashing is a lonely job for suckers who can fly and shoot but either can't fight against real targets or have résumés lousy enough to be rejected by the private security firms desperate enough to use automated robot sentries to guard their operations. And you think I would want to spend the rest of my days breaking apart asteroids to serve big business transit lines, to aid supply lines for the military? Actually, I don't quite mind the second part- they are protecting humanity's collective ass… most of the time.

Scoff. _Aliens_. Enigmatic, insidious, uncommunicable. Who cares? So there's only one species of spacefaring life besides humanity, hell, only one species that is actually above the range of protozoa. So the xenobiologists and theologians are all dazed up in a tizzy. That sure doesn't mean mankind will lose out on all of our valuable minerals and living space! And advanced technologies of course, and a valve to let out our murderous impulses. Let the united fleet go forth and exterminate, we'll all pay a percentage of income to the governments back home a year, and I'll keep out of the way. No military or military-funded jobs for me- please. It's not the ranks and lifestyle, it's the death of it all. Thank God that the afbs don't feel like invading us. Their weapons make ours look like a beam pen against a mining laser. We can't adopt the tech, either, not with most of the physics missing.

No, the only danger I can make a profit out of is humanity. Plenty of scofflaws out there, despite anti-afb garrisons nearby and sheriffs and all of that floatsam. Sheriffs. In the fucking 24th cent. Idiots, the whole lot of them. They aren't hypocrite lawbreakers- though most are corrupt, naturally- but they're such cross-eyed inbreds it isn't even funny. It's like a few generation ships got here but only one family survived, and they dumped the kissing cousins on us poor folks. The whole system's screwed up, if you ask me. Earth has been peace way too long without anyone deciding to help us. It's like they used up all of their energy building the orbitals. How many Mars terraforming experiments have been attempted? Oh, the homeworld lights up when you get close to it, but the rest of the system are just stable, well-populated mining towns. Not much better than here, just with more people.

Speaking of which- I was talking about that, wasn't I? Ey! I digress easily. There's a crushing sense of ennui out here amongst these dull rocks. Space is cold, the only lights pass quickly, so drinking is always a sport. I hunt people. Well… not as a bounty hunter, per se. They go all over the humanized sectors, from home all the way to the asteroids. Me, I stay here. I'm a pirate-killer. It's not as stupid as it sounds. Three-quarters of the raids on ships are made by organized groups. The stars are flooded with their kin. _Space Pirates_. Everyone thinks they're a joke, just a gaggle of raiders with a delusioned sense of honor. Not so. Raiders are different from pirates. Raiders pretend; pirates live. They really must be the gene-broken children of the generation ships. They think that they have nations out here, and it's their duty as the first settlers to pillage and rape every single ship and settlement that's come here since they first got here. Not that the generation ships were a great tribute to humanity's prowess- three hundred thousand left, a few hundred got here. Laughably, several of the ships were intercepted after ftl got invented! Sad.

So some got pissed. Their lives, their whole existence was for void. So they dredged up what they could from their big ships, used them as bases, and started raying everyone who got close. Most got killed off after the Ten Year's Campaign of the last century. But more remain. A lot of illiterates who settled here joined them. The difference between them and raiders? They have culture, and raiders don't. They have grandeur fixations, and raiders know that they're petty. Pirates do create elaborate socnets, with their own men out here in the settlements. They consider themselves sovereign nations with agents and spies, instead of muggers that you see only if you fly unescorted and alone. There are enough of escorts, bodyguards, bounty hunters, and that sort of mercenary out here. I'm a pirate killer.

I hunt pirates. This hat is a badge given by the colonial authorities. I'm don't do the typical shoot-to-kill sort of job. I have to investigate these matters. I can crack locks and break heads, I can borrow ships and never return them… and even sometimes I get the promised romance and adventure. Often not, though. It's a bit like fighting organized crime crossed with chasing fanatic survivalist guerillas. They have vendettas, and they relent but only after they satisfy their ideolog requirements. They don't torture like La Famiglia, and they don't fight until they're reduced to beating you with detached limbs like the Foxmen, but they're still a harsh crew, pardon the pun. Some of their 'captains', they're as bad as serial killers. Lunatics, the whole bunch of them. It's unsettling to have a decapitated, skinless cadaver hit your window while you're in space, I tell you that…

It's a bit like foreign spytasking, too. Far less sophisticated people, though. I meet informants in the cantinas, I beat threaten to shoot them with the gun I've hidden underneath the table, I start brawls just for diversions. I get a lead, fly to some deserted mines, talk to the loners of space, do my job. There are some specialized teams out there, who actually find the lairs and blow the hell out of them. I get some company now and then, but much less. The old anti-raider, Gray Blade, has helped me. So did that new hotshot, Trespasser. Colonel Krasnov, the military governor of Alkes, is a good flak for a military man. But often I don't get wingmates for my assignments, not even military dimlights who know how to fight but don't know how to stay alive.

It's a niche field at the time, like so many hobbies on the frontier. I expect more will shift to this if I don't finish it. One's got to keep busy in the dark, dark, future.


	2. Forced Retirement

"Forced Retirement"

"_Join the great exodus! Help save humanity! Meet new lifeforms to study or kill!"_

_Those brochures… no._

_Three generations frozen. Ninety billion gone to void. Blast them, beat them, break them._

_This blaster is a newish one… I think it's from LasCoTech. Or is it Colonial Armaments? Frontier United Creations Killtech Section? There's no hole in the barrel. Crystal and glass in this thing… blasted fragile in a real fight. I saw enough of these 'modern' weapons kill the user._

_This time, I want it to. I need it to._

_Outside this viewport… bores the hell out of me. I had a career out there. Paid well. Forgot about the bitterness. Kept it in. Let it out when I had to be really sadistic bastard. Planked 'em, plinked 'em, plonked 'em. Then politics got involved. Oh, those military bastards were always too busy. Out fighting aliens, or stamping on rebels, or going back to Earth to kiss ass. They never fought us unless we brought the fight to their doorstep. And they killed us… not with war but with peace._

_Earth- damn it, I bet Nelson's Column is gone by now._

_And the rest… damn them all. Damned Salazar. Damned Reiter. Traitors. They knew what they were getting into. When the armada came and blew away my kinsmen, I didn't blink a second eye. Traits of traits. Ha._

_Ah, screw it, I came here to kill mys-_

_No. They didn't give me this leg for nothing._

_Let them come. I'll get-_

The door slides open easily with the fiddled card, smooth as death rides over the terminus. It's quite sad, really. This was a man who was a scourge. Scourges don't just come out of nowhere. Even among the poor and defective, scourges demand respect.

The old man's not alone. He sits behind the starlodge desk, slumped over, but he's breathing heavily. Two goonloons stand behind him, dressed in full regalia. My Hypnos Tas sends thousands of volts into the turncoat's nerve system vis-à-vis a shot to where the skull meets the spinal cord faster than the more traditional-looking pirate can hiss "_Decatur!"_ in melodramatic loathing. The scurvy dog's been reading too many Jack Sparrow tales. Heavy eyeliner gives him panda-eyes over his trim mustache and Vandyke beard. His cutlass is a raysword and his blaster's butt is tattooed with engravings and etchings. He struggles to ready his pistol. I shoot him with a blaster set on shock.

His companion is also a wantabe reenactor, but is dressed less gaudily. The corsair wears pajama pants under a flimsy vest with no shirt underneath. He's probably no more thought of Medina than taken a style check at his turban-like flophat of many colors. His sword is made of superheated space alloys, ready to strike, as is the dagger in the other hand. I shoot him with the Taser set on high. His one-thousand-first tale has ended in tragedy.

He fries, he dies. At the very least he won't be playing with sharp objects once he gets out of his coma. The other is tougher than I thought. He actually dodged the shot before I fired, which was the only way to avoid it. He nearly brought the cutlass down on the old man's throat before I kicked a chair into him, knocking him back. I shot him again, but he let himself fall to avoid the shot. He slants forward though his body is on the ground, and shoots at me with the fancy gun. No dime. Far too off. I shoot him again.

Scurvy dog is down. Blasters aren't meant for nonlethality. The coin-sized hole in his shoulder is cauterized, but he'll miss it.

The room was crappy, grimy, and Spartan. The only bucca-gear I could see was the classic Jolly Roger grinning on the cap. It actually looked like something that Napoleon might wear, had he been willing to be never taken seriously. I grabbed the cap and slipped it into the unbuggable shielded pocket in my jacket. Another trophy.

I turn to the scourge.

"It's an honor to meet a brigand so great who needs a second-rate PKer to rescue him."

He's barely conscious from the Tas shock, yet he flashes me a profane gesture.

"So you hate being called brigand, pirate?" I looked down at the prostrate form. "You're past your prime, old dawg. Can't turn tricks no more. Your nation has forsaken you."

An explosion burst somewhere out in the hall. I sighed, and slung him over my shoulder. I ran out of the corridor, where a third pirate stood. A young buck, dressed in an astrosuit even gaudier and foppish than the other two combined. I managed to shoot him three times with the Tas before he realized that he had been hit in the eye with pure voltage.

I ran into the elevator. No one was aboard. The lodgekeepers must have sealed off the floor on purpose, which meant that the military men were already here. So much for getting credit for securing the last Crossguard Privateer all by my lonesome.

The blue-tuniced dimlight in front of the elevator pointed a gun at me. How many of his pals did I just save from the pirate nations? No matter. I threw the old space dog into his arms. His superior came to me and saluted.

"Well done, corporal," he said to my rolled eyes, "You've secured him quite well. We'll take it from here. You'll be receiving you recompense in just a moment."

The old codger is on the ground, dreaming of the blood and booty. I shrug my shoulders.

"Just make sure to spell my name with an 'u.,'" I replied.


	3. Wonders of Modern Tech

_"Wonders of Modern Tech"_

_The _Kronen Kraken_, a light gunboat of the minor piratical nation of South Barnard's Star's tiny army, shivered in the nothingness of the void. It was between a rock and a whole field of rocks, pressed against the belly of an asteroid. Nearby, wolves hunted the wild dogs._

_Six military ships, top of the line, equipped the best of the best of sensors. They had exited hyperspace a while off, surprising the little pirate ship, and proceeded to pound the living daylights out of it. The Kraken's hyperspace machinery were smashed, its weapons had all been spent or incapacitated. Aboard, the first mate punched a viewscreen._

_"Callaye!" hissed the skipper. "They'll 'tect us!"_

_The other man rolled his one eye._

_Their ship was on the underside of a large asteroid twice its size. They had shut down all power save for life systems. It was probably all in vain- after all, the military sensors on the ships outside were capable of detecting the tiniest heat signatures from the twenty-plus crew members of the gunboat._

_The ship's engines necessitated minutes to power before being able to fly. The pirates could neither run, nor hide, nor fight._

_Abruptly, the military ships went into hyperspace, mysteriously disappearing. The first mate blinked, feeling relieved, when_

_…the pirate-fighter _Shore of Tripoli _exited hyperspace, at the edge of the wide asteroid field_. _The crew sighed. This PK-er was not the most successful of all, but he at the very least had weapons and a flying ship._

In the cockpit of the _Shore_, Decatur cursed as he struggled to recalibrate. The hyperspace jump was off. He had arrived too early, far from the local spaceport. He was only fortunate enough to avoid manifesting inside a black hole.

An alert beeped. There was an incoming message from several hundred kilometers away. The computer said that it was from a tellbox- a cheap transmitter dropped by ships that lasted about a Terran day or so. Decatur opened up the message. A young, overserious, stiff-looking stoogie appeared on a screen. "This is Midshipman Brighton Noah to any ships passing by field Phi Omicron. A hostile pirate craft has been pursued here, but not yet captured as of 22:10:24, Military Standard Time. Please be advised until a full protection force has been deployed into this area. Thank you for your cooperation."

Decatur scoffed at the regimentation. The military types always spoke in redundancies with information any pilot- or schoolkid, for that matter- knew already. And if he wasn't a trained (ha, ha) spacefighter, he would be pretty much shaftered.

He decided to hunt down the presumed pirates. He flew into the field while actively scanning with IR, radar, and darktime image enhancements. Nothing. The Aural Simulation Mechanism was eerily quiet, as for once the asteroids weren't jumping all over the place to smash his ship into pieces. Decatur did this for about twenty minutes, blasting at larger asteroids randomly, but making sure they wouldn't fly into his ship afterwards. The rechargeable laser cannon was steady.

Eventually, he got tired of it all. Flipping a scope, a panel in the cockpit's roof slid open, and Decatur took out a pair of goggles. They were pitch black, as dark as space, if the spaceship-standard bright lights were turned off. He entered a command onto the flight computer, and the new ASSIST device he had bought just a day ago switched on.

The goggles lit up the field. It was the dark space of cinms- the background was black, but everything lit up and shone without the ship having to illuminate it. The textures of the rocks were better pronounced, and space actually looked bright. The _Shore of Tripoli_ could fly freely without the pilot having to worry about the low performance of the ASM.

After a pause, he turned on the ASSIST-boosted sound system. A burst of sound followed. Unlike ASM, all of space pulsed with an awesome hum, almost like the cosmic "om" of the Buddhists. Each rock had its own voice, singing. The discordant yet harmonious movement somehow brought together a common call- that of a ringing _ping_, which Decatur took to mean the detection of something out of the ordinary- another ship?

_Aboard the _Kronen Kraken_, the first mate started choking as the fully-armed, larger-than-light interceptor flew directly at the asteroid the _Kraken_ was huddling against. It was no mere anti-asteroid fighter, but a ship designed for a pilot who would have to fight crewed ships two to ten times its size. The _Shore of Tripoli _was not the best of the bunch, but its belly had a full complement of engine-seeking missiles, unguided torpedoes, several varieties of particle- and ray- guns, and lodes of sensors._

_But then it stopped. No one breathed as the interceptor stopped right in front of the pirates. The parrot who sat upon the skipper's shoulder screamed, leapt off, and flew to the back of the ship. The captain spun, pulled out his pistol, and shot the bird, silencing it. The shot rang across the boards. The skipper's expression was priceless._

Unbeknownst to Decatur, the Audio Seeker System Integrated for Space Technology was heavily based on pseudoscience, opportunism, and false promises. It claimed to use the stateart-est of ASM science to not only translate signals into sound, but to detect sound in space itself- an utterly impossible feat. While such waves could not transverse without a medium, the ASSIST system promised to detect such minute movements as an astroman walking atop a rock or whispering within a ship, translate them with the standard ASM system, and then retranslate it into visual form. In reality, the ASSIST scheme was attempted by the military, failed, and had been repackaged by corporate techies to be sold as silicon snake oil. All it did was alter the preexisting sensors of the ship it was inserted into to create a dreamlike wonderworld of sensory.

Unfortunately, the pirates' ship was sufficiently cold to escape infrared detection. The shot aboard _Kronen Kraken_ was insufficient to rock the ship enough to affect the ASM. However, due to the already buggy nature of the system, ASSIST went haywire.

_The pirates were agog as their second death sentence turned and flew off, at a trajectory completely opposite from where they hid. The ship sped off, discharging all of its weapons, laserfire shattering rocks and missiles exploding. It flew wildly, spinning here and there and twisting and turning like a Brahma Bull. It turned in circles, firing._

Decatur knew the deficiencies of new technology, but the goggleview was so real, he simply had to respond to the three or four Super Saucers that had suddenly appeared and were billowing out plasma bolts. The sound quality was magnificent. His first instinct was to run, far, far, away, but he felt that he had a clear view, he could engage the afbs with all that he had. He vaporized one after repeated blaster shots, and then caused another to hit an asteroid. Decatur whooped a cry of excitement as he realized his ship was barely getting hit at all.

Barely getting hit…

He realized that all of his armor and shielding were intact, miraculously. Not a single plasma shot had hit his ship. That was impossible. Improbable. Inconceivable and incomprehensible. Decatur frantically tore off the goggles and reactivated standard ASM, just in time to be greeted with the _whoosh!_ of a ship entering hyperspace.

And there, in the silence of the vacuum of the void, he swore that he could hear laughter.


	4. Fool at the Tower, Reversed

"Fool at the Tower, Reversed"

The Colonial Authority gave me the red hat a long, long time ago. It was beaten-up when I first got it, and is now blanked-down all these years and months later.

It's a hat for wildlife hunters in the alpine with earflaps and poormach-stitching. My grandpappy had one when he taught me to shoot fowl in a preserve in Labrador. No fancy circuitry for sensors or comms; just the insignia of the universal shield and stars on the side. It's a nice accouterment for my job- I suppose the government has to do _something _with the clothes no bummer with dignity would want to wear. My hat's kept me warm while exploring the abandoned mines of Blackthorn, kept me cool from the awful ceiling lighting of Torgau Satellite, kept me camouflaged and stealthy in a thousand barroom bloodbaths, kept my head dry from the industrial-grade rain that's currently drizzling upon Merchant Freeport.

The punker shot my hat off. Not the first occurrence of its kind, except he was using a fucking genuine blaster.

I felt the hat burn up in halves- the second skin of the fabric ripping off of my skull, and the top of it flying in front of my face, landing perfectly in my bowl of pricey, imported New England cream chowder I had just bought after a relatively successful assignment.

Well, a centimeter away and I'd be dead. I spun around on the barstool on a dime, shocking the hell of the punker with my Hypnos Tas. The kid, dressed in the faux-pirate rags that are all the rage in decrepit societies, seized up and crumpled at the doorway of Lucky Lou's.

The barrel of his ArmsWorth blaster was still smoking. I took the gun and slipped it into my pocket, then turned to Lou, who was cowering behind his counter. He's been new at the frontier lifestyle, having recently moved here from San Jorge, a town in some small province on some boring planetoid somewhere in the Terra system. But he's learned a lot- he's trembling but at least he has a bar cleaner in hand. Lou's definitely going to need the shotgun when the big league rowdies turn his cantina into an arena of death.

I sighed, and pulled out a dull credit coin and flipped it towards the bar. As the coin landed in a cup, a well-armed, fully-armored military constable strutted in dressed in full colors.

"What's all this, then?" he demanded in a rough and utterly dumb-sounding voice.

He would have blasted me away and taken half of the cantina along with me if I hadn't managed to press the button of my timepiece, projecting my holographic license in midair. His kind don't take kindly to not getting a chance to shoot and yell orders and brutalize people. Since I wasn't wearing my badge-hat, his one slot memory would have no room to hold the idea that I hadn't fire the first shot, earlier. The permiso didn't help. I tried to tell him that the punker had fired at me for no apparent reason, but all the dimlight would do was to shrug his shoulders, claim that pk-ing was out of his jurisdiction, reinforce the excuse by further claiming that he was off-duty, and walk away, leaving me with the would-be killer kid.

I remember that it was here when I started muttering about all of the crap I had to deal with at the near nadir of the frontier ladder. Before I could inspect the body, the kid suddenly got up and ran out the door.

The Hypnos Tas shot I had fired held enough voltage to stun two res-mammoths. By all rights, the punker should have been comatose and struggling to breathe.

I didn't have time to turn to Lou with a poorschmill expression on my face, the way goonloons usually look when you pull a quick one on them. My first and only response was to run after the kid. Thinking along the way, I took out my ancient Colt .45 semiautomatic, a third century anniversary special. My great grandfather bought it, and it still gleams as if new.

The interior afternoon weather of Merchant Freeport is a hazy atmosphere of drizzle. It was a fresh and new alternative to the heavy, choking rain, and the light, invisible sprinkling that would have made me trip over a railing and plummet off of the raised street. Even though Merchant Freeport is in a completely enclosed dome, and so completely under control of the colony's administrators, the weather is still completely fouled up with heatstroking summers and industrial rain. The water's so thoroughly mixed with the factory smog that being here is like reliving 19th century London, 20th century Los Angeles, 21st century Beijing, or any similar emphysematous hellhole. Why they would have huge factories when this is the largest trade planet outside Sol and Terra is beyond me. To make things worst, the skyscrapers, while not truly rascas, are built atop raised platforms next to raised overpasses, with forty stories above the platform and ten more underneath. Streets hundreds of meters over other streets.

Idiotic colonials. They might be hardcore for carving out their own little place on the despondent frontier, but they still can't escape bad engineering in urban design. Earth might be a boring 'topia with the overweight plague, but people there can at least build cities that make sense. Merchant Freeport is just one of many settlements that had its charter owners go bankrupt, become abandoned for an undefined number of time, and then half-heartedly rebuilt by developers. Colonials can't draft a blueprint worth anything. No wonder Bladerunnerville is such a success- old Earther folk have to go _somewhere_ in the system to laugh at the crappy conditions their poorer cousins have to live in.

Well, I'm Earther myself, and stupid enough to be out in the stars chasing after adoles who pack heat and shoot you behind the back. Pray I don't slip and slide my way off. The crowds are surprisingly sparse; I guess there's still rumors that the rain's pH level is climbing. There's a reason why prospectors like us wear heavy jackets and trench coats.

I didn't know why I was chasing the kid, I realized after the instinct wore off. I supposed I just want to get him back for wrecking my hat- my hair is starting to dissolve. Also, he's a metanatural occurance. There's been urban legends that the Tas don't work for one schmill in a thousand, rather than zero out of fifteen-plus billion, that gene therapy coupled with advanced Jedi training can help a person avoid getting the worst shock in their lives. Whatever. Guess the Second Amendmenters and survivalists are afraid that their firearms aren't powerful enough to hurt craze loonies, witches, or their most favorite ethnicity to persecute.

So as I weaved between the stands of knickknacks and between display tables of crap, as the stainrain beat down upon my head like a taxman at the debtor's door, as the astrosuited tourists yelled curses at me for wandering into their latest picture and spacers looked spicily from out of darkened bar entrances, we ran into a department store.

It's the size of a full shopping mall on Earth, almost as long as the main street of a small town. It glinted with mall-time gold. The inside was nice and temperate. Not a lot of people around. We ran from section to section. Up escalators and down elevators. He caused quite a mess, throwing stuff around, trying to trip me. I had my Tas and holo permiso out, shocking more uppity bystanders than really try to hit the punker.

The kid ran out, towards the First Colonial Bank of Richtown on Deckard Drive. I nearly got ran off the road as an idiot on a airbike swerved in front of me from a street on the left.

He turned and jumped off of the platform road into the city below.

I immediately stopped and poked my head over the side, cautiously. Hundreds of meters below was another lane of concrete, this time covered with personal transports and trucks. Punker wasn't anywhere to be seen. If he had fallen, the splotch where his body was would have been mortar-and-pestled to the bottom of the ground, but I couldn't see red anywhere. And then his hand grabbed by collar.

Having no witnesses around was a mixed blessing. On one hand, I didn't have to deal with any tourists asking questions, crying afoul, demanding basic human rights, that sort of thing. Then again, someone to call the real cops would be good in the situation. Of course, it just had to be a bank holiday. I'm not the type to call for help before I've _apprehended_ my _perp_, but this kid was somehow sticking to the underside of the street while keeping a hold on me strong enough to keep my body pinned onto the sidewalk as my head and neck dangled over the drop. I reached for my .45, but all I found was an angry boot as I blindly clawed on the ground at my side.

I twisted my head to see who it belonged to. It was a gypsy pirate king, dressed gaudily with a EastEuro 'stache and that look of stereotyped conniving. He had a trick with the long throwing knife in his hands, making it disappear in one and teleporting it to the other. He looked ready to toss it into my skin.

Beside him was another Roma, dressed less colorfully but also with a bandana around the neck. It was plain blue with a fading logo of a shield shattered by a plumed spear. The guy held my weapons in one hand, pointing them at me. The fellow was much heavier than the other traditional type, and was actually very jacked, muscles fully unfurled and tendons pulsating in waves. It was completely unnatural. The guy looked as if he could have picked up a car.

_Oh, damn it all_.

The gypsy motif was just a sham. They weren't simple pirates either, nor even run-of-the-mill rebels. They were another one of the Colonial Authority's closet skeletons. Experimentation in null-G, biofeedback, virtual 'reality', psychotropes made from alien flora, the whole shebang. They got set free without another thought after one bureaucracy obliterated another without bothering to check the details of the little experiment. No, I doubt it was actual induced human anti-gravity and personal matter teleportation. But they sure are hellalot stronger and speedier than us regulars.

And I had managed to kill one, a long time ago, on Brahe around Caph. I had no choice but to bring out the heavy firepower in a way both unsportsmanlike and uncharacteristic of my style.

Actually, it was the mission I was just on…

Now I had no firepower. The toughman had my hands tied behind my back. The punker was up here. The toughman grabbed me by the neck and held me up decimeters in the air. Classic pose.

The king addressed me. "Son of the mundane, meddler with what is unfathomed to you-"

I interrupted. "Decatur would do. Your lot does a lot of meddling in the unfathomed yourself."

He grinned. "We are here to deliver the punishment for the murder of Ceferino Jovanovic by an outsider who is foolish enough to invade Roma lands."

I snorted. "You're no more Roma than I'm Inuit. Stop showboating and get to the punishment."

The king grinned wider and threw the knife at me.

Instinct saved me. I half-turned, half-spun in the grasp. It was actually quite comfortable, as the grip was loose enough so I could speak and breathe. The knife flew away. I spat at the toughman, drenching his face. He didn't flinch. Must be used to this situation. We've all been here before.

"You are swift and brave, outsider Decatur. For that we shall give you an even swifter death!"

With that, the guy threw me off the platform.

I was actually quite lucid once I had my back to the streets below and stopped screaming. I wondered why the little trio above had only arrived in such a small number. Didn't these people have courts? Why would the king come all of the way here personally to seek revenge for killing a subject? Oh, that's right, they're only pretend gypsies. Whatever. I desperately wished for a propelled incendiary. Don't think they're _swift_ enough to outrun a minor-miner-missile.

I wasn't prepared to die yet. Nihilistic as this job and life is, I actually have a few friends and family back in civilization. And I never did learn how to play the piano.

_CRUNCH_. I knew this might happen, even when traffic is low. I had landed on the hood of an aircar a third of the way to the street. I turned towards the glassplate and pressed a button on my timepiece. Then I pointed up.

A message bulletin was blinking on the dashboard. "ALERT: Colonial Authority operative in distress. Assist immediately or this activated message will result in maximum charges!"

Sometimes it was good to work for the big league.

I couldn't really see the driver through the tinted window, but he saw me. I got the lift, jumped off, and thanked the driver by deactivating the alert message by another button press.

I was only a few meters from where the whole episode had taken place. Gypsies nowhere to be seen. The weapons were on the ground. Odd. They're the lot to take a guest into shelter, charge him for the stay, cut his throats with the high prices, and then rob his belongings when he's away. But they left my gran abuelo's .45, and the Tas. It wouldn't be until the next day that I would discover that the Tas was useless with the most expensive part missing, and the .45 was in need of serious overhaul from a craftsman, most who are unavailable out here in the kuso colonial life.

The rain beat down on the pavement like a taxman to the debtor. My hair is almost liquid. The simulated sun is falling, and the crimeslimes will be out soon. I needed to buy me a souvenir.

I need a hat to shoot people in.

One was waiting for me when I got myself back into my room, on a chair facing the door. It was multicolored, and had the symbol of the pierced shield on the front. Other than that, it was a replica of my old hat. I took one look at it, closed the door, and didn't bother getting the few toiletries left inside.

In space onboard the _Shore of Tripoli_, I read that a massive fire had broke out in Richtown on Merchant Freeport, caused by an explosive from an unknown source at the tiny lodge I was staying at.

I didn't anticipate that. I thought it was just electrified.

Never gonna take Tarot again.


	5. Motifs

"Motifs"

Back into the pit again, across the void I go a-warping. Good ol' space. Bleakest of the bleak. Darkest of the dark. Nothing but deadly cold and radioactivity. Makes you realize why no life besides us and the Bug bothered to evolve sentience and all that.

The fields of stars shine so far away, but when you get close to them they're real bastards, real killers. I can't help but return to this. The ship's all ready and freshened. I'm done with vacation. My revenge against the Neo-Gypsies was chilled and sweet- still need to thank Gray Blade for his assistance. The credit was hard and savory. Then, five days of clubbing and mingling with the tastes of the material flesh on Merchant Freeport, Ishtar, New Vegas, followed by a day of detox and attempted memory retrieval ended by a Sabbath of confession, absolution, donation of percentages to choice charities and the feelings of the spiritual… spirit at St. Mary's on Anselm. Funds almost completely frittered away. That's how it is. Hard to believe I've been in this since PM Fox-Bennett's last term. Need to go home next cycle around.

So now Kierkegaard's Point looms in front of the glassplate. Typical derelict station, obsolete and almost abandoned. Depressing place for the guy to be named after. They've given each major mountain and valley and crater to every small-bit astronomer, physicist, sci-fi writer, composer or character out of Western legend, but philosophers still end up getting screwed. Salieri is a L2 orbital, and Stephenson gets his own Planet on the Outer Rim. _Sci-fi writers_. Damn them and their schoolboy enthusiasm. Blast them for setting us up for disappointment. Sure hasn't made my career any better.

Old steel, tungsten, and bonafide real glass in this baby. It's ISS-class, full of connecting modules to make it look like a giant Tinkertoy. Huge solar collectors are falling apart with micro-meteorite strikes. Crew left seventy years ago for Terra after the colonization failed. Station forgotten in the mad rush towards other efforts and buried under tons of paperwork.

The surface of Andersen is as desolate as the Moon. EU team left a few landing pods and probes, but there wasn't much to find. No real resources- that's why the TerraComps took out their funding, and the mission failed. Last military inspection was five months ago; nothing suspicious was found, but the dimlights didn't actually bother to board the station.

Five days ago the government-in-exile of the pirate nation Republic of Mordor IV fled to the system. Republics I through III were destroyed in the last couple of years, each based in a system at least ten light-years from the others. It's a universally popular label. The names of the govinex are Abraham and Isaac: father and son. I hate it when the naming is apropos. Pirate-pater Abraham _is_ an unbalanced fellow, but he hasn't sacrificed Pirate Isaac yet- when the time comes, though, he'll follow through with the fear of the absurd.

Whatever.

No shots yet as I leave hyperspace. But they didn't take many with them in the govinex. Besides, it is the nature of the pirate to feint and fake- Decatur the PK, Book II part vii. My superiors want me to capture these brigands alive, though I'd rather just throw a few torpedoes at the central compartments of this giant daisy chain, maybe do some cutting with a laser, and the scurvy dogs will be at Davy. Scanners show that someone is definitely alive in the derelict. No one's groundside, either, and visual probes confirm that. Ground tests show no underground passages. If anyone's shielded down there, the robot probes will get them once they stick out their ugly heads.

My astrosuit is ready. Stupid, standard dark blue of the military and nothing special- I don't do a lot of swimming around, so I haven't bothered to buy my own and accessorize. That's a mainline bounty hunter thing, anyway. PK-ers got no time for the dilly-dallying with cosmetics.

I got the Tas, my .45, and a cheap submachiner I picked up on MF. This thing is as old as Spacerace One, but the bullets will fly smoothly in null-G. I also have a blaster. Hopefully I won't have to use it.

_The Shore _docks nicely with the docking module. Got to hand it to the Euros- efficiency in uniformity is a good thing. This station may be obsolete, but its standard size means I won't have to cut a big enough doorway into the place.

Kierkegaard's Point is awfully clean. Most of the derelicts around Earth are infested with fungi and funkie nourished by cosmic rays and leftover skin cells. The surprisingly roomy tube is white-sanitized. So I've entered the station without getting shot yet. Good sign.

* * *

So I passed through several tubes and modules, finding nothing. The place was cleared out. The Euros were thorough when they left: some rooms had parts in the wall stripped bare. The entire station was a skeleton of everything they couldn't salvage in a hurry, except the recycling life support system the European Space Committee left running just in case some unimaginative, uninformed bureaucrat decided that there was some urgent need to recolonize Andersen a few centuries from now. 

I was inspecting an empty cafeteria when the sentry shot me. Fortunately I still had my suit on, because the blaster shot would have burned the skin off my belly if it was covered only by my jacket, along with a few precious organs. I was in a bad spot. The efficiency happy surrender monkeys had already taken out all of their benches and tables, leaving me in a completely exposed area meters around. I immediately jumped and demagnetized my boots, sending me into null-G, shooting up towards the ceiling as I pulled out the submachiner and peppered the ground beneath me with bullets. The pirate machine was a clunky gun mounted on wheels. It could shoot in a 360-degree axis, but the crystalline clear tube was easily blown apart.

And may I add, I cut quite a dashing figure flying against the backdrop of the star-studded space. The window they had there had a nice view to absolutely nothing.

I landed and remagnetized. Stupid scanner can pick up heartbeats, but not motion. My suit was burnt, but whole. I reloaded the gun and entered the kitchen. No one in there. Light was on, though. And there were remnants of food floating in the air: dehydrated pasta strands, freezer burned carrot sticks, large crumbs of spacepie. The waver was warm to the touch, and there was a glass of milk inside. Someone had been in here recently.

The "hall" back to the main passage was through the ceiling. I once again deactivated my shoes and swam up. I've only had basic training for fighting in null-G. So that was a problem when the security turret popped out of the wall and shot the .45 out of my hands as I floated out. I quickly reversed direction and dived back into the kitchen. The turret fired loudly, shots ricocheting off of the hardy tube walls, shattering viewers and screens. It did not come in bursts, but single shots in fast succession, and it did not fire wildly, but at the opening of the port to the hall. The computer had recognized the weapon I had, and had shot it away before I could do anything.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for father and son to attack me while I was pinned down in the kitchen. They didn't. If they really wanted to kill me, they could have had a servicebot manually seal off the module, depressurize it, and wait for me to die of asphyxiation once my air ran out.

The comp was obviously designed to disarm the enemy first, and then disable it. That was nonsensical, considering that if I had just poked my head out of the porthole, the turret would have filtered me out right then and there. Yet the program running the gun was smart enough to shoot my Colt away, first. It probably had a standard list of weapons to choose from.

Edges are a common weapon now that the colonies have a poor class who can't afford blasters. I found a cleaver in a cupboard and tossed it out of the port.

I actually looked into the hall. The knife spun edge over handle several times before a bullet shattered the blade and the pieces were knocked back down into the port. I put my suited arm over my face, shielding me from the shrapnel, and shot the turret with my submachiner. The gun emplacement sputtered, coughed, and sent out smoke before dying. I was pushed back against the wall with Newton's third law, but at least it was done.

Close one. My grandpappy's Colt still floated in midair. It was peppered with holes the wallgun gave it before it focused on cutting off my route to the hall. Rest in peace, grandfather. I know you'll forgive me. I don't know if I will for allowing a three hundred year old priceless museum piece get Swissed by an autoturret.

I checked my sensor. Still nothing. Damned pirates. They're probably masking their lifesigns with armor or jammers. For all I know, they were right behind me with a blaster at my throat. I spun around just in case. Like any vermin or creepy-crawly, their best friend was stealth and chicanery.

That's one of the reasons the field is so small. Oh, any asteroid smasher who can fight can get accepted to a job as raider scourer. A raider would have jumped into the cafeteria, unjammed, back when I was doing an aerial ballet against the sentry, and then proceed to have a million volts pumped into his system. Pirates don't consider this a career; it's life.

And it's my life to end theirs- either their careers or other lives. Grim, but it pays the bills. It's a part of my penance, I suppose. I don't feel bad at Mass for the job when I think about how many grizzled transport captains or sleazy commodity traders I save from certain death. Am I not the knight of infinite resignation? There's the damn symbolism again.

I digress. The next hall was wired with enough explosives to turn the entire station into a giant fireball, slam the smithereens into the surface of the planet, and then carve out a crater large enough to fit an entire Kansan prairie town.

It would have gone off, too, had I not seen my ship parked outside. The tube-module-hall was dimly but nicely lit, was the length of a b-ball court, and connected one wing of the station with another. The walls had long, anti-rocket windows that were pitch-black from the view they provided. I stopped at the entrance to the hall just to see if the _Shore_ was still okay. I had just put on my helmet to zoom in with the visor when I got bombarded by a hundred angry giant exclamation points. The scanner had detected infrared lasers in the room, connected to sensors in the walls, connected to Splamo!. If I hadn't put on the helmet to stargaze, the whole station would have been gone.

Typical military tech- pretty decent equipment, occasionally, hooked up to non-user friendly systems. I hate my bosses.

IR visor revealed that the whole tube was crawling with rays. I almost turned and left the passage, when they all suddenly disappeared. I blinked.

Had a motion sensor found me, decided that I had found the trap, and then created this second one for me? All I had to do was to take a step forward, and then the lights would go back up and Kierkegaard's Point spins out of existence.

I'm no dimlight. I don't take challenges set by pirates. I took a step out of the passage when the PA came to life. "Knight of Fate. This is Johannes de Silencio. I beseech you to work out your salvation. Cross this church farm and come to me," groaned the creaking voice of an oldster.

Typical piratical wantabe nonsense. This station was named aptly. Apparently Pirate Isaac took over the place to live out his philosophically-based dreams or something like that. Or maybe he's just playing with me, feigning insanity by speaking in obvious riddles with obvious references. Got to hate it when a pirate drops an allusion on you. Either way, this fool had been there for quite a while to set up all of the traps. Doubtless the last military patrol was useless. Probably it never even happened. Underlings lie.

Either/Or, eh? The PA message could have been prerecorded. A bad joke that kills someone who's curious enough stumble onto an abandoned pirate nest. On the other hand he might have been across the passage right then, and on the other side of the station was his inner sanctum sanctorum.

Credit is credit. I demagnetized my shoes, climbed up a wall, recoiled my legs, and pushed off, shooting off. I flew across the hall, twisting and turning and dodging the IR beams, the warning beeper in my helmet blaring a constant wave of hysterics.

I didn't land at the other side. I flew past it as the explosives detonated, starting from the end of the hall where I came from. I must have tripped it early on. So much for grace and style and a clean flight. The explosion took me and shot me through another port. My sensors were wrong. There weren't enough explosives to blow up the place. Or maybe it was never supposed to unless someone triggered them by remote- not motion sensing, after all.

Good theory. My flight didn't stop, but I realized that the blasts, which were supposed to blow up the tube passage by each compartment on the wall, stopped before I got to the other side. I looked back, and saw that a safety anti-breach door had closed up at about halfway across the tube. My last thought as I flew out of the tube and into a room was that I was now stranded on this half of the station, which was previously inaccessible due to a lack of docking modules.

Inside the room was Johannes himself, nee Abraham. The pirate was dressed up in shepherd's robes, but looked like a patriarch neither Jewish nor Biblical. Wantabe reenactor. He had a tinge of serial killer: there was a solemn, genuine look of fear and trembling as he clutched the platinum-iridium scalpel over the prone body of his resigned-looking son. Damn it, how I hate it when pirates stage the drama. It was all laid out right in front of me: he was the Old Testament Abe, here to sacrifice his Old Testament son, knowing not why but following his faith in… who, exactly? Me? Does he think that I'm his Maker? Is it because I'm here to kill him? Am I the knight of faith or the knight of infinite resignation? Don't tell me: there's a bomb in his son. A fucking Splamo! implant. Honest Abe stabs Isey, and the whole station goes. That's the reason for all of this. An incredibly elaborate suicide sequence.

I shot him with my Tas. No need to overanalyze things.

The pirate jumped back. His sandals must have had magnetic soles. He didn't double up and start crying, though. He only smiled as Isaac's restraints broke, and the young, strong-looking pirateson jumped from the weird sacrificial altar and into my chest. I got knocked back into the hallway, _hard_.

Tas didn't work. Isaac swam in and pulled a curved edge- a falchion- out of his white robe and activated its superheated edge. I pulled out my submachiner and shot him a few times in the chest. No die. The blasted robe was anti-projectile armor disguised as a cheap costume. I've got to find where their black market is located. Isaac sliced the sword through my gun, halving it. I threw it at his face. He cut it into fourths.

I shrugged. Such weapons are three a penny on Merchant Freeport.

But there went my non-lethal weapons. My only recourse was the stupidest maneuver I had ever pulled in my life.

All I had left was a blaster with no stun feature hidden inside my astrosuit's sleeve. It was set to Blast, and I reset it to Cut as Isaac gloated with dishonest Abe, who crept in behind, grinning.

It was pure chance that I made the sniper shot. I narrowly missed hitting the pirate-pater's head and giving him a quarter-sized lobotomy. What I did cause was a hole on the wall behind him.

Pandemonium. The station instantly began to depressurize as oxygen ran out. The doors to the room automatically sealed, but not before I blew out the one between the tube passage and the sacrificial chamber. The three of us were trapped in the depressurizing room formed by the passage and the chamber. Father and son brigands were scrambling to get a hold on the sides of the doorway and to prevent getting sucked through the tiny hole to the vacuum.

I held on, grinning stupidly with my helmet on and breathing the sweet, sweet, putrid oxygen tank atmosphere. Looked like Abraham had suddenly lost the connection between finite and infinite. He had no trust in the strength of the absurd. And all that jazz. He had no wish to sacrifice either himself or Isaac for whatever crazy imaginary scheme he had carved out in his head. The wind was surprisingly fierce for such a small leak, and the two had weaker and weaker grasps as their air supply ran out. As I saw the patriarch's fingers slip, I let go of the tube and flew into the chamber, my entire body sucked onto the hole. My astrosuited back plugged the gap. The wind stopped blowing.

The two pirates were floating stilly, paralyzed. The bends will do that to a person.

It took me half an hour to tie up their unconscious bodies. Couldn't take any chances with them. Abraham was immune to the Tas because of his robe, but I wasn't sure. For all I know they were connected to the Neo-Gypsies.

I left Kierkegaard's Point brigands captured, back into the void, without angst.


	6. Those Who Put Out Fires

"Those Who Put Out Fires"

They were called Blue Team from the very beginning to their very end.

Rochester had always insisted on calling themselves "Code Blue". It somewhat described their job, but was still inaccurate. Besides, they merely had Orange to Red-Orange status.

LaSalle, the jazz fan, suggested "the Blues," which was how they were often referred to in passing, but sounded too informal and whimsical to be their official name.

Barrington dubbed them "Deep Blue". That label was also inaccurate, with its connotations of digital sentience and gigacorporate control. Their outfit was merely _under the influence_ of the corps.

Blooms, the jingoist, named them "Blue Shield." It wasn't bad, but a shield suggests a large, blunt object utilized to block sharp projectiles. The team was entirely antithesis to that idea.

Names with naturalistic connotations were not brought up, such as "Bluebacks," "Bluebootles," or "Bluefins." Neither were aristo phrases like "Bluenoses" or "Bluebloods." Gems like "sapphire," "lapis lazuli," and "turquoise" were immediately deemed effeminate and fit only for true army boys.

Bluecoats would have been a good name, but it seemed too general, as if to suggest thousands instead of sixteen to twenty. And there were few in the military who did not wear coats, jackets, or tunics of that color.

So, Blue Team. That was the name of their elite classified counter-terrorist stealth force.

* * *

Thorne rolled that idea around in his head as the transport's retrorockets fired. It always did him good to think about mundane, irrelevant matters before a mission. Thank the stars he had scored low enough to avoid Secret Ops. God only knows what the gen-spliced super-super soldier-spies thought- if they did, at all. And thank Terra that he had scored high enough to miss joining the mission-crazed commandoes of the Mariners. Based on the philosophy of their "r"-less terrestrial brethren, except on steroids, their lot was to fight and die in null-G for absolute victory.

Blue Team, on the other hand, was a "Tactical Stealth Force," somewhere between the special forces of the mundane non-stealth and the super-super special soldiers of "Deep Black" clearance- come to think of it, Secret Ops was a veritable military of its own, connected to the Colonial Authority like a giant tumor hiding an underdeveloped twin. Thorne, a mere _super_ special soldier, was permitted an actual life, but it was to occur only on base. Maybe when his term is over, and he had undergone the treatments to help him sleep better at night and to forget classified info, he could return home with a good pension and a vague feeling of patriotism. But for now he was encouraged to remain human within the context of the war. So if that meant he could have Zen thoughts and think about other things besides the mission, he did. He could even have compassion. As long as it didn't impede combat performance.

The other elite classified counter-terrorist stealth infiltrators stopped chattering as the blockade runner snuck behind the ring-shaped orbital and latched on. The ship was deviously designed. No war had ever occurred between Olde Earth and Terra yet, but the military had already planned for every possible aspect of war. The runner, with its stateart features, was capable of both eluding gunboat sentries and secretly deploying an anti-terrorist force.

The ship stopped.

Machinery outside whirled noiselessly as a hole was drilled into the side of the station. There was always the risk of the enemy on the other side, but even if they lost the element of surprise, the hostages would be safe.

The commander, a veteran named Cadsen, stood and addressed the fifteen others.

"Alright, caddies. Listen up. Last review of the rules of engagement. O'Leary was handling the negotiations, and he kept dropping hints that if the governor and his family aren't released, the tangs aren't gonna know what hit 'em. So, they're expecting a full force of Mariners to pop onscreen, rape a dock, and bust in guns blasting."

The others grinned. O'Leary was a nervous, pompous bureaucrat hired for his callousness to discretion and innocence of gracefulness. He was often given bogus briefings before the missions, since it was expected that his genuine inability would "reveal" the military's secret plans.

"On the other hand, these aren't your typical tangs. They're experienced mercenaries. Mostly guerre, but a few ex-guild assassins. All trained for shootouts in null-G. They're keeping watch in case the military pulls a stealth mission. Well, here we are."

"Body count?" asked Thorne.

"Ninty-five," replied the comm.

Cadsen nodded to the other squad leaders. "They expect the military to hyperspace the logistics: have multiple teams get in at multiple insertion points. They think we're going to storm the station. Little do they know we don't give a rat's mass either way- saving the governor is just a good PR thing. We'll have multiple squads, entering at one insertion point. This is an empty storage room. We get into squads and head for squad targets. Alpha and Beta will go clock, Gamma and Delta will go contra. Got that?"

The others all nodded. "Shoot them all," continued Cadsen. "Knock out all security before entering the hub. No witnesses. Their leadership isn't desperate, and they know we'll give them house arrest if no one gets hurt. Mercs are another story. I'll take Alpha into the hub first. Ready?"

Blue Team responded by pulling their masks down. All were made anonymous, now, faceless save for the eyelike light projectors on their faces. They locked and loaded.

Cadsen smiled and pulled down his mask. "Ready," spoke his heavily distorted voice.

The laser ceased cutting. A circular hole was made in the wall, connecting to the pressurized docking tube extending from the side of the transport.

Of the four Tactical Strike Forces, Red Team was the most gung ho. Composed of promoted Mariners who proved their mettle, they were actually quite reserved compared to the commandoes; they were akin to a typical terrestrial team, since they were trained to sneak and shoot, not run in with guns blazing as everyone had saw them.

Blue Team was actually the second most confrontational. The TSFs were effective because they truly possessed a lot of tact. Green was a recon and sniper team which usually performed best in orbitals with lots of open space. In fact, they were usually instructed not to engage or fire at the enemy unless they were at least half a click away. Yellow was the strangest of all. Trained for pure stealth, they were often unarmed on missions and ordered to not only not attack the enemy at all, but to never let the enemy know that they were ever there even after the mission. An often repeated excuse at the base when a belonging was lost or a notice overlooked was that the Yellows had sneaked into the barracks and surreptitiously messed around. It was a joke, true, but one had to wonder if Yellow Team was ever unleashed in the civilian burbs to tamper with the possessions of ordinary citizens. After all, how could anyone ever know?

And the four TSFs were of only moderately high secrecy within the conventional military. Only the comptrollers and their corporate buddies know what kind of capabilities lie at "Deep Black" status, in the Secret Ops, which was nearly a military of its own instead of a mere branch.

The short docking tube opened to a closet of supplies, spare parts, and ubiquitous of ubiquity- paperwork. Cadsen went in followed by his Alpha squad. Li Zhong followed with Beta, Grigori with Gamma, and finally LaSalle with Delta.

Sixteen elite classified counter-terrorist stealth infiltrators floated in the cramped closet, equipped with magnetic soles but preferring to operate in their choice medium. After they were all ready, Cadsen gave the "all's well" message back to control. Parsecs away, the grizzled old general nodded and flipped a switch at his console.

Inside their gear, electrical currents flowed as eldritch technology activated themselves, prompting thousands of streams of info and datum to appear on the fabric of the facemasks the stealth infiltrators wore. Besides navigational symbols on the margins of their vision, the infiltrators saw measurements of physical well-being, fluctuations of temperature and air composition in the room, and huge brackets around their teammates to dissuade friendly fire- and best targets over vulnerable body parts if they wanted to.

Cadsen slid open the door. A radar on the fringes of their masks detected two in the next room, both next to on the same side of the door. Easy.

He floated out, having pushed off a heavy case stacked with boxes of paperwork. He entered the hallway and caught the two mercenaries unaware, shooting both in the chest before the targeting software even reacted.

One fell backwards onto the top of the room, and the other spun slowly, prone in the air. Blue Team had entered the building as it always did: upside-down and inverted.

Contreras looked back to Cadsen. "Tango down!" he whispered.

"Two," replied the point man.

Thorne and the other two in Blue Team Alpha followed their point man, Contreras, toward the lift. Their squad acted as a point man to Blue Team Beta, whose members were heavier armored and slower. As the heavy gunner of his squad, Thorne kept close to Contreras while armed with a beanbagger along the 7.62mm military standard rifle.

Most of the tangs they encountered along the way were swiftly dealt with. Obviously their radio silence would soon be noticed, but that would just bring more guards. Since they weren't on an overt mission, the beanbagger Thorne had was an anti-surveillance weapon that neutralized all of the cameras in the area by creating a loop of the past ten minutes. Langley, the countersecurity expert and sniper, had found a terminal and created the same effect to the rest of the cameras on the entire station.

The mercenaries proved to be less adroit than expected. They were often on patrol alone or in pairs, and were neutralized together. None managed to retreat. Only one managed to fire off any shots with his loud, unsilenced assault gun by leaping and demagnetizing his shoes, flying towards the infiltrators, who swerved out of his way and caught him at the neck. The unmasked man choked a bit and spit before closing his eyes. The saliva streaked across Throne's mask. The guerre was dressed in a camo T with a military-styled vest instead of unspecified dark black with slingbleeng. A guerre.

Thorne wondered if he really believed in the seditionaries, or any of the dozen-odd groups against the Colonial Authority. Perhaps he was a rebel from Belt Battles, where the creaking giants of Olde Earth had thrown out their backs in one last show of nationalist glory. Either way, he was no match for the legitimates' armaments.

Most of the guerre were similarly dressed, some with arm bands, others with bandanas. As always, they were the same dusty gray that was antithesis to not just bonnie blue but the rainbow of elite classified counter-terrorist stealth forces and military intelligence security clearance levels of the establishment government. Their cause had many supporters, but it was only a slim minority of the population. On the frontier, there was always someone more depressing than you were.

This station, on the other hand, was antiseptic and silvery, the command center of a bourgeois official with cash to spare and debts owed by the poorer masses below. Apparently, this local chapter of seditionaries still held usury to be a crime, and, instead of just paying off the debts of the population, used the money from membership fees to buy arms and hire assassins, instead.

Thorne pondered this as he shot an assassin in the back. This schmill was smart enough to run, looking awfully uncool, uncalm, and uncollected despite his snappy black garments and his shiny alien gems. The guy fell forward and rose a meter in the air as his soles demagnetized. He looked quite comical, since to Thorne's point of view he was running on the ceiling.

The lift doors opened to two surprised guerre, one dressed in an astrosuit. He grabbed a lift wall, ducked, and pushed with his legs, propelling forward and skimming the ground above while shooting at Alpha squad below with a blaster. Contreras took out his slower friend inside the lift, while Thorne got the astrosuited glider above, his shot penetrating the suit at the neck. However, a blaster ray had struck Thorne at the joint on the reverse side of his right elbow as he had raised his rifle to shoot the flier.

The armor was breached. Thorne's arm was cut, but fortunately not sliced away. Most of the cut vessels had been cauterized by the laser, but in the meantime the heat had also scorched some others in the skin around the cut. He was still bleeding quite badly, and his numbness confirmed the alert inside his mask. A fine, red mist enveloped his face.

He saw perfect spheres of blood float all about him, and wondered if his life was trickling away with them. He then looked at his in-mask HUD. It was.

Squad leader Cadsen doubled as medic. He took out a patch from a small box at his belt and placed it gingerly onto Thorne's arm. The bleeding was staunched in seconds, and feeling returned to his arm. Cadsen took out a roll of Re-Armor™ and wrapped it around the exposed flesh, repairing the SKINsuit. They entered the elevator.

The entire floor had been cleared in 3:23:03 minutes. Radio check confirmed seventeen down so far.

Within the elevator, each man inwardly relaxed. Cadsen muttered a minor praise. Langley reloaded his sniper rifle. Thorne wondered if GAMDC would give him a medal for the wound. Definitely not, but at least they'd fix his arm completely.

Thorne was disgusted. These were the lawless who had even greater testicular fortitude than bug hunters and larger egos than pirates, yet were weak against mere technology. So much for jettisoning the guild for personal advancement. They were no match for Big Law.

En route to the main level, control sent a message to Cadsen. O'Leary was speaking to the seditionaries. They were showing no signs that they knew an invasion was happening. Beta and Delta both had infiltrators trained for subterfuge and mimicry. The enemy's communications was easy to crack.

Blue Team Alpha righted themselves on the next floor. All they had to do now was to eliminate as many tangs they could find around the rim before entering the hub. Beta, with more firepower, sought the quarters of the mercs. Gamma headed for the bridge. Delta was getting rid of escape pods, though control would probably destroy any as soon as they got at least a click away from the station.

They found the wrongly-dressed guerre and the black-clad assassins all out in the open. Neither was well-suited as guards. The former were killer in terrestrial woodland warfare; the latter were for hits and urban assaults. Their guns-for-hire mentality was all wrong for this operation. They fled when they could, leaving injured seditionaries behind. They cursed like angry children, stung from a big bad honeybee.

What they were good for was in null-G shootouts. Even more than veteran guerre, they liked to demagnetize their shoes and attempt aerial ballets. They were even dressed in trademark glasses with dark lenses- crimson red and radioactive green. Unfortunately, the hallways of the station were often too cramped for them to pull off their showy maneuvers, having forgotten that they show was for lighter corporate battles, that these weren't simply company police or militiamen. Firing wildly with semiautomatics and those wizardy modded blasters- globe wands?- many paid with shots to the limbs. Then again, they fared much better than the grunts they had out in the lower floors.

And so another floor was almost cleared. But by now the leadership must have gotten news that they were being attacked from within. Guerre armed with assault rifles and submachiners poured forth from passages leading to the hub. Switching to another mode, Thorne fired traps with his beanbagger, insect-sized mines that hovered or stuck to walls and exploded with the force of a fastball to the cranium when anyone got close. The four infiltrators huddled at one hall near to a hubdoor and now fired openly at anyone who got near. The guerre were getting desperate now, flying at them ineptly in null-G, helpless to any of Thorne's traps and Langley's sniper shots.

But in this wave, new assassins met them. Dressed in simple black, but without the jewelry, they moved swiftly in weightlessness, leaping from wall to wall like lizards, pushing off, spinning, zigzagging erratically. One almost got close enough to hit Contreras across the face with his globe wand, but was quickly shot. In response to the improved challenge, the Blue Team Alpha moved around in their little area, surrounded by fallen but floating assassins and guerre. Though more went around the rim to attack them from the rear, they were dispatched, too.

"Enter the hub, now."

Control's message was succinct and sweet. Blue Team Alpha quickly flew around the unconscious shields and into the passage to the hub. None challenged them. Security weapons would have been popping out from the walls now, but Langley had disabled them long ago.

Inside the hub was the communications center. Monitors covered the walls, and the governor and his family were bound and gagged at one corner. Of the leadership, only one had out a blaster and was threatening the hostages. At the other corner, one seditionary boss slumped against a static-filled monitor, a hole in his head. Blood floated around him. The rest of the leadership- six in all- were also armed and glared at the interlopers.

The angry, loathing seditionary leadership were an old batch of extremists. These were the men who had led their faction, who had charmed young men to die for them and sold poor men to cry for them. They probably had great accounts somewhere in the banks of Cibola on Terra or possibly in Switzerland. House arrest would be a happy time for them, as long as their neighbors didn't attack them.

The one threatening the hostages spoke. "Put do-"

Blue Team shot them all. Each had picked a head as they entered.

Cadsen floated to the hostages, who sat there googly-eyed and thankful. He took out a Morpheus Tas and shocked all of them. They would be okay within a few hours, but for now they were out of the way for the rest of the firefight.

* * *

Which was nearly over at that point. The squads reformed on another level and began boarding the last escape pod. Alpha did the securing, and Thorne was last to leave.

He took one last gaze at the hallways of the station. Nearly a dozen guerre and assassins floated there, many bleeding, all incapacitated. The Colonial Authority clean-ups would arrive in an hour, salvage it all, and cook up some story about how the local militia rescued them all, killing all of the terrorists in the process. Only one escaped.

He turned to board. Just then, he thought he saw movement at the corner of his eye.

A figure floated there, in a position somewhere between lotus and fetal.

_Ninety-five._

The fellow was covered with a towel lit with holo-projectors and a temperature shield. Camouflage for sensor scans and true invisibility for the naked eye. His only trace was the shimmer he created whenever he moved. The thing must have cost a minor fortune on the black market. Even higher-up military could never afford to use such things.

This mercenary had bargained for his share, and joined this operation expecting ragtag colonial militia and gung ho Mariners. Not a Tactical Stealth Force. He couldn't have run while Gamma was destroying the escape pods. Now he had no choice but to hide.

Thorne silently congratulated his enemy for his brightness so far, and started to call-

A bright ring manifested in front of him. The assassin shot his blaster, angry to have been in this mission, angry to have faced a damn elite TSF, angry to have gotten himself into this fix in the first place. It hit the infiltrator in the squarely in the armor of his chest. Should have gone for a headshot. The SKINsuit was built to be stronger there.

Thorne spun his entire body as he flew backwards from the blast, his legs suddenly becoming parallel to the ground. He fired, the round hitting the towel at 640 meters a second, cutting a hole into the towel. Good guess, and the figure was hit in the arm and slammed back. Another shot from Thorne's rifle knocked the other arm against the wall. His towel flew away, revealing the rest of him, an assassin holding a sniping blaster.

His finger was still at the trigger. He squeezed off some shots at Thorne, who had quickly recovered, found a wall, and launched himself at the assassin. The assassin, furiously turned and spun, dodging hits but also missing. Thorne shot him again in the arm, and once through the transparent barrel of the blaster, shattering it into billions of ceramic pieces. The assassin writhed as the shards hit his face, cutting him slightly. His sunglasses were destroyed, a cloud of gold- rare color for an assassin.

Thorne floated up to him, switched his rifle to normal, and shot him between the eyes.

The tranquilizer dart slammed into his forehead at 640 meters a second, jarring his head, giving him a slight concussion along with the chemicals. The man grimaced and stared at the infiltrator for a full twenty seconds before closing his eyes. He had been hit multiple times by the automatic rifle mode, creating a mist of red that drenched a wall. Thorne checked the assassin, nodded, and branded him on the side of his face with a small stamp.

He returned to the pod.

"Mission successful," he told Cadsen. "Confirmed kills: None."

The salvage crews would pay special attention to the gold-glassed assassin. He had shown some talent. The rest was still inspected, nevertheless.

An entire station's worth of captives. No wonder they didn't send for Red Team.

And so the military's will be done, he thought as the pod flew away into the fields.

Back to home. But first the void.


	7. A Typical Jackpot

"A Typical Jackpot"

Frontier socnets always come in two parts: the friends you bet your life on, and the enemies who are currently your friends.

Me, I'm a lone wolf. And I've got one of the biggest socnets in town.

As it turns out, the town is crawling with brigands and 'bels. Its moniker of Atropos is most apropos- stay here long enough, and you're inexorably going to get your life cut short. There's that damn symbolism again. This miserable little planetoid is famous for its ne'er-do-wells, and the openness of said residents. About twelve or so pirate nations ranging from a mid-sized family cruiser to five planetary systems intersect at this hub, and they make a killing of currency by trading with Seditionaries and other outcasts. It's one of the few places on the frontier where you can curse Gam-Cee in the middle of a crowded municipal plaza and get away with it.

Of course, there's always a twist. This place ain't no pirate's nest. The funny thing is, the whole operation's a hundred percent legit. A Sheriff rules the roost here, and that's a good a pass from the Colonial Authority as if a stateholder from the GAMDC owned a mine here.

He's corrupt, one of the very few I've ever seen. Not that sheriffs are usually paragons of integrity. They're just usually too lazy and shiftless to be anything else than ineffectually moral. This fellow, he's the warlord type, complete with slave-built palace and a private jackboot army. The closest Federal presence outside the system is on Akio around Guiron, an ex-Sed regional power that's boiled over and is now the responsibility of an overworked military governor. No ships will be diverted to handle Atropos, pop. two million.

But a crooked sheriff is still an unsightly grass stain on a hyena's hide, a blemish that the Colonial Authority didn't authorize. Should a good citizen catch wind of this rat hole, there's bound to be some sort of activity by any of the Unholy Triad. And there probably are; Secret Ops folks are just as skilled as a freelancer schmill like me at bringing down a system from within, and much cheaper than an armada of army men or company security forces (i.e. mercenaries).

And that's the crux of it. As I walk between these faded white, adobe-like lean-tos and entire rascas filled with not office workers but dirty brigands, I'm currently at _the_ consummate legal black hole of the galaxy.

The sheriff's not just a decorated veteran Alien-fighter and an illegitimate son of a highup Stateholder- he's the owner of the largest assemblage of lawyers outside the Terra system, even including the G-8 territories. The gatekeepers of military law, his posse includes many of the best colonial attorneys of recent years. They've got their own castles on Nottingham Hill, within fortress walls they received pro bono and protected by him religiously as they guard him litigiously in Atropos' weird nova-feudalism. He pays them well for keeping any action against him purely corporate, judicial, and discreet.

GAMDC can't and won't lift a finger against him, and the Colonial Authority takes its cues from that company, anyway. The military/mega-conglomerate got its own self-symbiotic identity crisis to worry about. G-8 doesn't care about a twisted lawman, since they and the rest of Earth thinks anything farther than Lusistania is full of uncivilized barbarians or Gam-Cee corporatist lackeys. The UNSA's got too many human rights abuses to handle in the interior, hell in the Solar System, anyways.

So the sheriff got to his position through nepotism _and_ bureaucratic, legalistic wrangling. The neo-neo-Confucian Sinos of Tianzhou would be proud.

So I'm free to mingle in the greatest array of scumbags and villeins in officially lawful space. It's the Merchant Freeport of legal crime, which is to say at the end of the day it's not that different, a change in color scheme, that's all. The sun and soil is bleached white, terraformed, but still bleak and lifeless. The place is successful, though. Promises of free water and plenty of real estate have brought everyone to town, lawless and some lawful alike. The sheriff likes Colonial Authority public servants, since if they try to prosecute they'll end up being the perpetrators. Wacky world.

The fellows he truly doesn't like are the freelance do-gooders; bounty hunters, white bag assassins, raider scourers, and of course pirate killers. We're not cronies, and we're not harmless. He loves independent journalists, since anything they play is censored in Terran space and perpetuates harmful stereotypes he supports in Earth space. Free publicity, and all that. But us mercenaries with hearts of gold present a dangerous break in the paradigm, we bust it right up. And some of us actually believe in scruples, can you dig it?

Last time you heard from me my hat was a casualty and I wore an astrosuit instead. While that's fashionable in some locales, I prefer my new costume my hirers gave to me instead. It's not quite… contemporary, but it'll have to do. No one tends to take you seriously in this cloak and this hat, and that's a good effect for certain situations. No one seriously believes that you're a gov-hired PK-er, either.

I get no second stares from the corrupt constables. They're brute force, and know less Earth history than an Alien hatchling can. The pirates in the area don't directly recognize me thanks to my new wear, but they narrow their eyes darkly. Fortunately, the Sheriff, a would-be Prince of Verona, has outlawed any open fighting in his land, outside of the usual blood arenas. Pirate-killers don't get much recognition in the press, anyhow. Incidentally, I don't spot anyone I know from the business.

The town has Kanata's cold and bucolicness, a Saharan outpost's brimming bazaars, and any flyspeck planetoid's sense of desolation. I still like it better than Merchant Freeport, though. The streets are wider and the air is drier but non-corrosive. I take the time to scan for any leftover survivors from any pirate nation that I had fully caught, as easily spotted by their stupidly bright mourning colors that scream, "Hey! I'm the last one! Anyone want a ronin for hire? Or maybe a quarry/rival to capture/kill?"

They're all here, hired guns dressed in roughwear armed with blasters protecting merchants in muted but mismatched colors hawking illicit goods to pirates visibly relaxed that I couldn't capture them here while smirking at the flamboyant speedsters in shiny astrosuits strolling by advertising new races to hold and offers for smuggling, openly smiling as they get their pictures taken by bumpkin Earth and Terra tourists visibly disgusted by the many chemically-enhanced spacer addicts and frightened by the Seditionaries and ex-military men strolling around in ugly-looking armor painted in various shades of death, openly brandishing replicas of nineteenth century Gatlings while clad in leather and spikes and jostling meek serfs of the Sheriff, carrying heavy loads of goods and water with their heads bowed down.

I stop by a booth run by a gaunt figure in patchwork clothing. As revivalist fashions go, merchants wear the most embarrassing sort, medieval and renaissance-styled robes instead of suits like their non-nomadic businessman counterparts. This one also had a hoodie, a cap-scarf affixed to the head by tucking in its edges into the shirt collar. I buy some Tarot from him to celebrate my recent absolute rejection of the stuff. I then continue on wading through the masses of humanity, unceremoniously shocking a few attempted wallet rustlers. Every so often I stop by a booth or a shop to check in with local contacts. They're the ones I presume to be mostly harmless, civilians in this urban war zone and entrepreneurs just making a buck. Something's up, but I can put my finger on it. Lately there hasn't been as much pirate activity in this region of space, but what has happened is bizarre. A few feuds wars have mysteriously stopped. Capitals and strongholds have been abandoned and relocated. At least one p-nation even disappeared completely. Brigands aren't the type to call it quits.

My destination is a low-ceilinged cantina at the intersection of Main Avenue and Nottingham Street, nestled between a gun dealership and an entire office building used by the Seds for terrorist operations.

Capitol: Atropos. Planet: Atropos. Star: Atropos. Not much of a local tradition for creativity. Which is why Devil's Den was more than I expected. I pushed open the novelty saloon doors and sauntered in, hat at a jaunty angle.

The bartender said nothing but, "Hola, patriot."

"Hol', Bart."

"How's the troupe?"

"Hale. _1813_ got good reviews. You should see our show at Avalon-on-Terra."

"Don't get much of a chance to get off-plan'."

"I hear yah."

"Giddyap. What'd it be, pard? Three Star Smash? Lost Clementine? Sassafras Sarsaparilla?"

"Ugh. I'll take whatever's weakest. I'll lose both my voice and my looks with your drinks."

"Sass-sars it is, hombre."

With that, I was another regular irregular of Baquero Bart's faux cowboy-themed cantina, the type that outworlders come near every few rotations. The others don't pay me any extra notice- they're either drinking away their troubles, cheating a game of poker, or lying in a puddle of alcohol and their own blood on the floor. Ah, the socnet.

Baq Bart's a good listener, like all bartenders. And I'm close to sure that he's in the sheriff's pay. Why else would he bother to spruce up the place with cacti and spicy barmaids dressed in Old Frontier gear, if not to participate in city beautification?

It's a waste on the regulars, though. They've got no spirit at all.

I nattered amiably with Bart for a while. I'd say he's an associate at best in my socnet. I'm not too fond of a pair of ears who happens to be a permanent resident of Atropos. Last time I returned to the _Shore of Tripoli _on this planet,there happened to be a bundle of marked cash in my pilot room, plus a card of gratitude from the big boss. It happened right after I took out Yars's Mosquitoes, and still causes me great unease. The sheriff's fond of giving presents to people who get rid of his enemies. I wouldn't want to get caught in a space feud- or worse, be marked for employment.

The drunks are useless spacers or lower-level Secret Ops spytaskers in disguise. The ones who recognize my clothes give me mock salutes and drink to the Fourth. Johnny Cash plays on the jukebox. Ah, Space Age One nostalgia.

Finally, a fellow mercenary walks in. Thin, wiry, and tall with enough physical strength to fight his way out of a paper bag- barely. Name of Blanch, skin looks it. Origin: Tell Orbital, around Helvetica, Lylat system, Great-8 Treaty Territory. He's a mediocrity at raider scouring and a ratfink of an infotrader.

I'm ready for him. Blanch takes one look at me and spins around so fast his ten-gallon hat's still facing my direction in the same position. But before he stops I've hit him with my Tas, downing him. Baquero Bart looks at me expressively, tells me that I'd better take this outside. I wave him down.

The shock is mild, but incapacitating. I walk over to the Surrender Monkey Helvetii and crouch by him, placing my uncharged blaster into his belly. He moans and opens his eyes.

"¿Que tal?" I ask.

"You haven't forgotten about Evildrome?" he whimpers.

"I haven't forgiven, either."

He looks at the blaster, and attempts a weak smile. "I'll buy you a drink?"

"Make it two."

Blanch goes through it all with no quick sudden motions. He's looking no worse for wear, despite his weakness. Infotraders are spytaskers without gov backing, but a lot freer. A real good tip can win him hundreds of thousands of credits. Gam-Cee and the Colonial Authority military can be rewarding if they need be.

We sit at the bar instead of in a corner booth. No pretty barmaids to pester and flirt with, but at least Baq might break things up if Blanch tries to start something. We go into niceties quickly. The raider scourer knows that PKs don't go for expressive lethal violence. He's wrong.

"So I take it that you're earning more money chasing leads than shooting 'dissociated elements'?" I ask, using the corporate euphemism.

Blanch shakes his head. "Fighting raiders is just a cover, mein freund. The real credit is in I.T."

"Whatever flies your ship. I don't have a quarrel with that. What I do have-"

"Is with my business?"

I frowned. "You gave me no caveats. In fact, as I recall you described the information as 'one-hundred-percent pure and exclusive."

"I said no such thing, schurke!" he replies indignantly.

I'm wearing my Eavesdropper device. I hit the play button.

"Decatur, mein freund, there is no need for a caveat. This information is one hundred percent pure and exklusiv…"

He gulped. "May I interest you in recompense, ehrbar Herr?"

"What?"

"I know a good port of blackwares." To everyone else in the bar, we're speaking merchant lingo. Actually, since pirate-killing is so niche, we've piggybacked their lexicon.

"Where?"

"NGC-4812. A drop-off zone."

"Merchandise?"

"Rum and coke." Promising. Blanch is saying that there will be at least a mid-sized gunboat, with illicit goods as well.

"Brand of rum?"

"Willie Wiss." Uncreative alias for Will-o'-the-Wisp. They're low on the piratical totem pole, but if the goods are good…

"What coke?"

"Jolt."

If this was real, then I'd be living comfortably for the next two months or so. I might even have enough to make a trip back home.

"Sounds good so far, Schweizer. Now how do I ascertain its veracity?"

"Have I ever lied to you, freund?"

"You told me that Evildrome was located at NGC-0599."

He smiled sheepishly, holding his hands up. "Flip of the tongue. My mistake, Herr Decatur. This is not my first language."

I returned it. "And did you speak it too when you told the dirty pair?"

Blanch turned eponymous. "It was truly exclusive information. Did anyone else know it? When I told it to you it was exclusive, yes. Not so when I spoke with them."

I sighed. Ratfink.

"You do understand that if anything you say is wrong, I'm going to kill you?"

He shrugs. "Then I will be most foolish not to tell you now, won't I?"

"The galaxy's a small place."

"But I am no Dummkopf. Come, let us drink instead. To new beginnings!"

"Auf frisch Anfang!" I said, toasting the rascal. Then I shot him with my Tas.

He fell restfully this time into a slumber. I rifled through his coat, took out a wallet, and paid Baq Bart. I also found his cashbook, indispensable to any mercenary. The listings were all present. No recent payments. No trades. I should have asked him where he found that tip. He didn't even tell me the name of the place.

Oh well, I've gone into action with less information and gotten out a momentarily wealthy man before tributes. I'm cautious, and that's all that counts.

But before I left Atropos, I checked Blanch's ship just to be sure.

* * *

Turns out the only non-asteroid planetoid in the region capable of supporting space-suited life is Tiepolo, a Moon-like nothing. But the probes tell me there's lifesigns, and who am I to argue with military technology? 

I activate stealth measures in case they're watching. There aren't any ships in the region, not even a good derelict. The surface is more promising- there's two sites, about twenty kilometers apart, containing abandoned buildings. The probes have found movement at one of them. I suit up and descend.

While the ship lands, I activate the subspace astronomical database. Tiepolo: nothing of note. Gam-Cee inspected this place a century and a half ago, found some ore in low quantities but decided to skip it. They did drop down some equipment, which would be the abandoned base in question. I guess their business plan changed, and so they never bothered to come reclaim the place.

And so the pirates are here to roost.

Tiepolo is dry and dead, like Atropos except with no atmosphere or water. Everything is bleached. I'm unsettling millennia-old dust by landing. Hopefully whoever lives here won't notice. This site doesn't have much, actually, the shelter is no more than a shack, except pressurized and oxygen-fed. I can almost hear the whirring of the mini-drill as I step out. The old proprietor stand there, crouched over it, in an old astrosuit but with compatible communications. I buzz him with the radio, and he jumps. The fellow had been captured by his machinery, furiously working at the drill. Rusty and dirt-crusted, there didn't appear to be much hope for repairing it.

He nearly jumps when receives my radio-transmitted greeting. Apparently the freeminer never felt the vibrations from my landing. An old codger, his senses are dilapidated, and his face wrinkled through the faceplate.

"Doing a little mining, sir?" I ask politely.

"Sure am. Gonna get some magnesium," he says proudly, tinkering some more.

I didn't know what to say to that besides blink.

An awkward silence fell upon the radio.

"So, are you an inspector from Big C?" he asks. "Cause I've got my license, sure 'nuff. Your bureaucrat sumbitches don't have anything on me."

"No, your permiso's fine. I just need to ask you a few questions. For one thing, why do you choose to live here by yourself?"

The miner's white brows knot up. "Who are ya, a psych counselor? I choose because I can. A prospector can't get no peace and quiet in civilized lands. This place is as far away from the military asses as clean-living is from a Brazilian."

"You enjoy being a freeminer?"

He frowns for a moment. "Please, don't call me that, son. The real term's _prospector_. I like to think of myself as a forty-niner, or a Yukonite, or one of those folks who went to South Africa for the diamonds. I says, screw the conglo-me-rates. They're all a bunch of nambly-pambly robo-dependent suckers. Me, all I need is some simply tools, and I can make it rich on my own, one planetoid at a time."

"How did you get here, sir?"

He chuckles. "Of course I flew here, son."

"Where's your ship, then?"

He points at the shack. "That's my sloop. I brought it here, and converted it. Ain't she pretty?" he asks with pride.

That was rather impressive. It still looked like a shanty house, though.

"Who's sending you oxygen?"

He doesn't bat an eye. "I'm not so sure about that myself, sonny. These men in big ships, they pass by every now and then."

I raise my eyebrows behind my poker face. "Big ships? How big?"

"Oh, about a merchant's schooner. They come in twos and threes. I give 'em a drink, not that they need it. They sell me breathing tanks for the metal."

I nod. "What did the shipmen look like?"

He shrugs. "Rough, rowdy fellows, about. Got patches and hooks everywhere. But they're polite enough. I didn't press them about their location of origin."

"When's the last time they came?"

"You just missed them. They left yesterday."

I curse Blanch beneath my breath. "Well, thank you for your cooperation."

"No problem, cap'n," he said, returning to his work.

"You just tell me if you see them again. I'm going to go check out the buildings east of here."

"Sure thing, sir. But I wouldn't rec'mend it. It's a ghost-haunted place, it is."

I turn and walk towards the _Shore of Tripoli_, but I never hear him pull out the heavy rifle from within the drill and aim it at my back.

* * *

I see him, instead. It's always wise to have some sort of secret mirror or camera on your astrosuit to catch your blind spots. 

I whip around, pull out my Hypnos Tas, and shoot him first. It's set on scramble, and instantly overloads his suit. The old-timer falls to his knees, dropping the rifle. I rush him. He should be alright; the shock disrupts non-critical parts of the suit, but not life support.

The miner grunts, cusses, and grabs his rifle, having never bothered to shut down the communications port. He stands and tries to fire it, but I shoot him again with the Tas. Obviously, as a pirate associate he's got extra shielding besides the critical bits.

A fracas ensued. Long story short, he wasn't so tough after I had kicked his rifle away. He was fast, though, and knew the basics of astrosuit battle. Nearly pulled away some of my breathing tubes. I pulled him over to his shack, and threw him in. It was fortunate that the fight took place farther away, because this pseudo-pirate's got a hellalot of nasty equipment to adapt as crude weaponry. As I tossed him in, I also noticed that the home was nicely furnished, though without any evidence of pirate paraphernalia. I did find a keycard taped under his bed, though, and brought it along. I bound the old miner and locked him in the bathroom.

I flew to the second site, paranoid all the while, checking the probe readouts every few seconds for signs of movement. Portably-launched missiles are annoying wastes of shield power. The second site was much larger than the first, made of an odd command base with many holes in the structure from micrometeorite strikes.

After an hour of poking around fallen pieces of the ceiling and broken computers, I found this elevator, with a panel that looks brand-new. The keycard fits in perfectly.

A button pops up. ACCESS: BASEMENT? It asks.

The elevator doors close with a _whoosh_.

* * *

As far as I can tell, I had stumbled into a convention. 

Evildrome was a nest, but Tiepolo takes the cake. There must have been three thousand brigands mosh-pitting in the chamber, a rocky rough room carved out for their delight. The gaudiness could make strike you colorblind through overstimulation. The noise was grating. And the smell was enough for me to suck on astrosuit oxygen.

Evildrome had been the capitol of the pirate nation of South Cloud, a prominent sub-branch of a secondary generation ship. This place looked like an entire nation on its own, founded by no less than an entire gen-ship. Just my luck- I could see a sign on the wall: Pirate's Cove. _The_ Pirate's Cove.

I slumped against the wall. There's no getting out of this one. I had somehow uncovered a major pirate get-together in a legendary nest. Scant legends among the Pirate Killers tell of this place, where the leaders of many nations meet to scheme for whatever the hell they're going to attack next. At least I had been smart enough to scan the place instead of entering through the conference room door.

My fiber-optic scanner was slender enough to fit into a hole, bringing me a view into the inside. Wall-to-wall of the galaxy's horrors, shouting and cheering as some wild demagogue of theirs showed them next year's strategy for pillaging transports and colonies. The pirate wore a giant Napoleonic headpiece and was dressed exactly as blackguard brigand, a traitorous high-ranking captain who deserted his own country for a life of piracy, as the infamous Black Jack Lee. Next to him stood a phalanx of big bosses, including a horn-helmeted Norse brigand, a turban and pantaloon-wearing corsair brigand, and finally a conventional bandana-sporting brigand. They were all dressed in jewelry, bleeng. _Bigwigs._

The blackguard led his speech, speaking in a guttural dialect that I was not acquainted with. Centuries of living on generation ships and in the hinterlands of civilization created a veritable Babel of offshoots of Earth-based languages among pirates, and unfortunately an outsider can only learn so many. In any case, all I could see was that he was obviously very excited about something. He gesticulated frantically, and that was how I understood. When he shook his pointing finger up and down and spoke excitedly, he was speaking of raping and pillage. When he had his hands spread, palms facing the roof, he was showing how much they would rape and pillage. When he shook a fist, he was reminding his audience to always struggle against the oppressors. When he folded his hands as in prayer he was modeling the kind of people who made the best targets. When he jumped up and down he meant that he wanted the end the speech soon so that they could all depart to their looting and violating.

The crowd cheered, and then stopped being pirates for a moment and turned into cultists. They started an odd, rhythmic chanting, which was strange. It was slow, deep, and hollow. Each syllable was precise and utterly unintelligible, though it all probably meant something along the lines of "Loot the world, loot all creation, kill fight smash" or something to that effect. A few lost control of themselves and started burning pirate nation emblems on their limbs with rayswords and pulsation-blades.

It was quite odd. They usually sing chanteys.

I quickly crept away from the bizarre ceremony and headed for the exit. Luckily, they hadn't been smart enough to inspect the elevator- or have sentries capable of detecting the minibot I scanned them with. The only problem is that they'll soon sweep this hallway and found no recourse but to hide in the nearest utility storage room. No way out of this now.

_Time to call in the cavalry. Again._

I touched the emergency transmitter found in one of the corners of my hat, twisted it and pressed a button. It instantly flew a signal to my ship, which amplified it into the hyperspace and sent it into a very special network light-years away. The signal's eventual location will be at a permanent tellbox in Polybius, a city in Elysium-on-Terra. The whole journey, obviously, will take around four to six weeks.

Along the way, though, it should catch the attention of some interested parties.

I waited until the skies were clear, and then ran out of the compartment, from hallway to hallway of the place. Fortunately for me, the guard who had been in front of the elevator was farthest from the parley, and was free to get drunk and fall unconsciousness. But having spent three hours in the closet, hiding, I'd realized that they changed shifts every half-hour. Sheer fortune, God, and maybe the Virgin Mary were the only ones shielding me from their view.

I'm getting religious in the middle of a job. That can't be good.

I coughed into my astrosuit sleeve as I huddled against a damp metal wall. The whole place must have been left over by the Colonial Authority- part of a mining level, or something. Pirates don't build underground as treasure trove-

_Is that gold?_

It rested on the floor, a simple ingot half-poking out from a door. I crept up to it, and looked inside the room.

_Lordy!_

Looty! The pirates' storehouse! I could see sealed duraplastic cases, some open, and brimming with gold, credit notes, alien gems, bags full of spices, and high-priced tronics of every brand. Plunder and sackings worth of three good-sized schooners, or about two average pirate attacks, statistically. I glanced at the door sign: Storehouse 16 (of 99).

Reminding myself where I was brought me out of the ogling stupor. I managed to console myself with the thought of the reward I'd receive once I escaped, and somehow was able to leave with nothing more than the bar of gold I had first seen.

The storehouse door slid shut with a _whoosh_. A buccaneer brigand walked into the hallway, absent-mindly eating a shish kabob. He stared at me. I stated back.

" 'Ey!" he objected. "No taking from the storehouse, leecher!"

I promptly threw the bullion at his head. It thonked against his head, rebounded, and landed in my hand. Unfortunately, all he got was bruise.

" 'EY!" he shouted, pulling out a knife. My Tas bolt flew in the air, went through the path of most conductivity, and came out of the metal handle, into the brigand's wrist and up his arm.

I ran past him and into the maze of hallways and corridors. Brigands were alerted; I had no other chance now. I headed for the elevator, though by now the chances for it to be open were slim.

Final inning stretch, and I get tackled twenty meters away from the exit. I hit the grimy floor, falling into a puddle of alcohol. The rest of the mob gathered into the hall. They were dressed in rags, clutching badly maintained weapons to their bodies and vile maladies to their faces and necks. They jibbered and jabbered like apes- only the gene-broken and the dregs guard the halls instead of partaking in a parley.

The big bosses that followed them in were neither. They dressed in imitation military uniforms with large epaulettes in no color a Terran- or Earth- soldier would wear. Their faces were not darkened with paint or powder, but decorated with scarves. They did not all wear the devilish beards of the other spacemen, but were shaved clean, revealing their lineage from the impurest of generation shippers. Their hats were gigantic, yet looked purposeful, _correct_. And none wore blasters, but bizarre exotic melee weaponry and the finest of cutting-edge rayswords money could steal and smuggle. Some, I noted, had been stolen from high-profile experimental labs recently.

"Ah, a lowly floor-guarder wishes to thieve from his own brothers," said one of the high-born pirate kings. He grabbed my head through my hat's fabric, holding it to the ground and filthy puddle.

"Do you know the punishment for leechery, worm?" booms another, holding a giant warhammer made of God-knows-what ore. "What is your nation?"

Thinking quickly, I slurred, "Forgive me a thousand, lords of the sky. I am but a peasant of the Arcturan Star Empire, a fifth-level subcaste dweller."

One looked at the other. "He tells lies, brother. My nation has no such refuse."

Another snorted, and snatched my hat off, examining the brim. "Fool! You sought to deceive the high kings of the Western Arm? You are no mere carrion-eater."

He brandishes my hat to the others, who rage.

"Deceiver!"

"Murderer!"

"Killer of my kin!"

Funny, they suddenly turn and call each other names.

"You shall not die a quick death, villain! You, who have sold my kinsmen and nation to the satans of the military! Who seek to enslave us to the will of the False Earth and the old Earth! You shall be buried alive in your own blood!"

* * *

All successful jobs in the career of a Pirate Killer- or any other mercenary- should preferably end with a deus ex machina. 

Mine wasn't so spectacular.

The elevator door suddenly _whoosh_ed open. I guess in all of the hubbub, the fact that they never secured the entrance didn't occur to the brigands.

The inhabitant inside was my old buddy Gray Blade, raider scourer and part-time dabbler in the art of pirate killing. He held the largest triple-barreled gun I had ever seen.

"Let the kid go, brig-"

The door abruptly _whoosh_ed shut, and he disappeared. The dozen or so pirates in the room lowered their weapons and turned their attentions back to me.

A minute later the elevator returned, and inside was five more PKs, holding varied tasers and blasters. They stared back at the pirates, nervously.

I recognized Gray Blade with his characteristic beard, clint-squinting at the brigands with a devil-may-cry attitude unbecoming of a novagenarian. There was ol' Top, nervy and unsure with his precision-over-power LightGun. Don Cuadro looking as rich and ostentatious as the pirates, albeit in a different style, wielding an heirloom Glass Pistol his landowner ancestors themselves killed pirates and raiders with. Roebuck and Bullrunner, my constant foils, stood with dumb-looking rifles ready. Finally, there was Wentworth, as cocksure and sly-devil as always, clad in a rival period piece.

An explosion rocked the room. A pirate came running in five seconds after, ending the standoff.

"The Federales are attacking! Their tars are swarming the other chokepoint!"

The brigands cursed, and backed out of the room, weapons still raised and trained on us, their underlings careful to group around their beloved kings as human shields. Gray Blade shot the last brigand out of the room.

I gazed up from my place at the puddle, in too much pain to get up just yet.

"In your element again, Decatur?" cracks Wentworth, the aristo bastard.

I thought of shooting him, but he's quick on the draw. We all had a good laugh.

* * *

And that was that. The army men, assisted by a huge bureaucratic force of Gam-Cee representatives, secured the place. The Colonial Authority took the looty, promising to return it to the rightful owners, which would mean the Corporation. The reward combined for all of the pirates in the area who survived was hefty, but it was just my misfortune to have contacted a good half of my socnet for assistance. The accountants ended up carefully taking down the name of every single PK in the raid, minimizing my portion. If my share had been as low as at Evildrome's, I would have taken off my helmet on the surface then and there, but my profit margin just happened to be the very least worthwhile I went away richer by a tiny percentage infinitesimally larger than the ones the other PKs received. Plus the gold bullion, of course, which I now find is illegal to either pay with or cash in. It makes a nice paperweight. 

Like any successful job, at the end of the day the mercenary makes more than he started with- barely. And I make one last trip home, into the inspiring nothingness of space, kissing the frontier goodbye with space dust and plasma exhaust.


	8. Jolly Rogue

"Jolly Rogue"

Morning comes unnoticed on the frontier. At Horace Memorial Research Base, it's met with indifferent shrugs as a second set of workers hurriedly starts their shift, hornets in a nest. Last week there was another attack on a freighter carrying supplies, cutting down food rations to three-quarters. The hydroponics lab is back in action, but the vegetables taste like guano and the cultured meat like Playtex. Master Sorenson shakes his head and takes another sip of coffeehol. When will those damned mercenaries finally start taking the fight to the pirate nations?

H.M.R.B. revolves silently around Orpheus, a small gas planet in the Pelagon System. A commission colony classed scientific, its entire population of fifteen families all linked to the Sorenson dynasty is either busy at work studying the hardy alien microbes that dwell on the potato-looking asteroids Orphy calls moons, or getting ready for another six-hour sleep. Hundreds of kilometers away, the base's silent protector yawns and inspects his engines for the nth time. Somewhere in hyperspace, the Colonial Authority transport sent to restock the base suddenly gets a new set of coordinates and instructions.

And there is the heavily armed shark of space, ready to rob and kill them all.

The freebooter, née privateer was a cutthroat fellow with frugal tastes and expensive kills. He was no showy assassin, nor faux-humble bounty hunter. Nor was he an idiot armed escort, or _Tengri forbid!_ a wretched raider scourer or pirate killer. No, he was once a privateer, a high-class pilot immersed in corporate intrigue and political maneuvering, flying sorties out in Sol, Great-8, and Terra space alike, never out for the highest bidder, yet never too attached to his home nation/corporation to resist a good price in exchange for swapping colors.

His name and nation is unimportant. However, his modus operandi is.

The ex-privateer did not prefer his legal status as "renegade," or his occupational condition of "freebooter." Ugh, the military always had their dreadful epithets on the J-Net, as if they were able to specify every single possible profession and condition a freelancer could have. Besides, he much preferred something along the lines of "loose cannon" or "rogue agent." Yes, loose cannon. It would fit perfectly.

Twenty jobs ago, he had grown tired of playing it safe by sticking close to the Terra System, which meant that he was on pretty good terms with the Colonial Authority. Sure, he was allowed to give the military men a good scare when they grudgingly called him to service, as his country was in the GAMDC's alliance at the time, but he got tired of it all. Admirals preaching, always throwing good ships and guns away against Aliens or stellarists, never really get their act together. Even being able to sail freely under his banner with letters of marque got him too constrained; there wasn't anyone worth a damn to fight! Sure, they had him raid the supply ships of so-and-so country's meager colonization program, or told him to destroy that-and-that company's threat against the monopoly, but they were usually protected by armed escorts, mercenaries of one of the lowest degrees. At one point, they even gave him a job to **be **an armed escort, by protecting a civilian ship of all spaceboats, some scientific craft carrying experimental samples. It was pricey stuff, alright, but the operation was so unimportant that there was absolutely no chance of action for anyone to disrupt the delivery, and so the privateer didn't have any action to look forward to. And it scared him. He didn't want to become just another career schmill.

And so he resigned. He made it clear by hijacking the transport compartments, destroying the transport, and completely bombing the hell out of the fighter squadron assigned to accompany him on the job. A few days later, he sold the experimental stuff to a shifty spotcoatted backlab operator on Atropos.

The only negative thing was that now he was instantly marked by all legitimate spacefaring governments, declared a freebooter, and condemned to die. But hey! The ex-privateer now has plenty of swashbuckling to look forward to, and so he relished it.

Ever since that humiliating assignment, he has hit a science vessel every few months, always GAMDC property. He likes to think that he's making the competition more even for the mom-and-pop space businesses barely eking out an existence outside of Gam-cee stranglehold.

As in any typical mission, he likes to combine the grace and stealth of a panther, the duplicity and deceit of a serpent, and the raw firepower of a 'roided Mariner, in that order.

He had made a warpjump made into the position where Orpheus was directly between him and the base. The flight to the station was extended considerably, but it was worth the caution. He then slowly continued on, neutralizing any sensors he could detect. As he expected, when had barely crossed to the other hemisphere of the gas giant, Horace Memorial's guardian-for-hire reared his ugly head.

The commission colony was a low-level one, beyond the care of the Colonial Authority's protection. Fortunately, the old patriarch Sorenson had hired a mercenary in one of the more exclusive sections on JobNet, an armed escort with more skills and guile than the usual. The paid hero had hidden in the upper reaches of the planet's atmosphere, his ship hidden in a snug, beaten-up metallic envelope disguised as a trash metal orbital platform. The merc was sneaky enough to burst out of the shell and head for the loose cannon in a roundabout flight, immediately launching his formidable particle beam guns. The freebooter grinned- his foe flew a trashy-looking Machete-class fighter, all barrels, weak scanners, neither speedy nor sturdy. Maybe it was augmented, but he doubted that the craft was any better than his; he took one-man freebooting seriously as a fine art.

_Machete: one-man fighter, mercenary ship. Engine: Augmented W-4. Weapons: Standard laser gun, particle beam cannon, gamma ray gun, 5x Harbinger homing missiles, 7x Pelican torpedoes. Auto-Shield equipped._

Loose cannon's Epée was a small one-man fighter but hid an arsenal of weapons both deceiving and devastating. He took the first particle beam hits with stride, and launched his Gun Satellite, which detached from the underbelly of his fighter and flew head-on at the mercenary ship. The armed escort was distracted momentarily as the gunsat shot at him with a triple-shot of green rays, bringing down his shields so that the freebooter could hit him with an EMP round.

The ASM made a slight popping sound as the Machete's shields disappeared, along with his guidance, navigation, and weapons systems. The freebooter had made a lucky shot after the gunsat had hit the armor at a critical point. The armed escort, having lost control of his ship, continued to fly off in the same vector, gradually accelerating away from the freebooter, Orpheus, and the Pelagon System itself. At about twenty kilometers away, the freebooter fired a homing missile, which chased after the Machete until there was nothing left of both except for a cloud of ionized plasma.

Not missing a beat, a mixed squadron of three Daggers and two Bayonets flew out of the base, heading towardsthe Epée for an attack run. For most military pilots, he was in a bad position to be- in his fight against the armed escort, he was oriented so that the bottom of his ship was directly facing the open hangar door, completely vulnerable.

_Daggers: one-man fighters, general-purpose ships. Engine: Military standard. Weapons: Standard laser gun, 2x Standard torpedoes. No Auto-Shield._

_Bayonets: two-man fighters, interceptor ships. Engine: Military standard Mk. IV. Weapons: Standard double laser guns, 3x Ballad torpedoes, 2x Oracle homing missiles. Auto-shield equipped._

Before they started, the renegade sent them an announcement: "All who withdraw from this match shall keep their lives without cost. All else remain for your demise. I have no wish to hurt women or children." When none left, he cried a mighty "En garde!"

Not breaking a sweat, the gunsat revolved around the ship to the bottom and blasted away, severely damaging the shields of two Daggers. The freebooter followed it up by rotating to face the attackers and shot the Daggers with the EMP. One had its shields down, and instantly lost all control. The Bayonet behind it collided into it, its shielding completely wiped out along with its armor, chassis, and everything else in a blaze of ignominy. Bayonets were supposed to be tough. The other proved to be no more, as the freebooter neatly zapped the shields with a one-burst high-powered maser followed by the EMP. This time, the pilot turned out to be smarter, dodging right after the shields dropped to escape the freebooter's signature weapon. The renegade shrugged and turned to destroy another Dagger with a torpedo, one that had been stupid enough to face him directly with eighty percent of its shields missing.

That left one Dagger and one Bayonet. The two were smart enough this time to work in tandem, especially frustrating since all three were going into a typical spaceduel- the enemies flew against each other, unloaded their weapons, then fired thrusters at an angle so the ships would become vertical in relation to its earlier position, drop back to the horizontal position a distance away from each other, and then return once again. The freebooter frowned on such tactics- so coarse, like archaic horseback jousting. So, tiring of the sport, he simply adjusted his rockets to slow his movement the third time he realigned his ship for the duel, sat in position, and fired his missiles and torpedoes. While the other two ships had made some progress earlier by flanking him on two sides, damaging his shields, they were now quickly cut down.

They hadn't been military, or mercenaries. They were no more or less pilots who had lived and died for their colony.

Within his Epée, the renegade saluted the men. Their loss was his gain, and it was gentlemanly to acknowledge it. He fired at the base 21 times in salute.

Aboard the base, the dynasty's savant-colonists heaved a collective sigh of "Blast, we're piffed."

The freebooter turned his attention to them, flicking on the comm. system. "Attention, fair tinkers, this is your amicable local loose cannon speaking. My sources tell me that recently your base has received a hefty shipment of asteroid crystal. How that relates to studying space lichen, I can't possibly know. But we both know that the refined crystal is quite… treasured in the proper markets. So I would be very delighted if you would share your crystal with me. All of it."

He hoped that he had sounded both intimidating as well as dashing enough.

In any case, the colonists quickly gave in. The axle the torus-shaped base rotated around shifted a little as compartments rode on external tracks on the side of the colony's hull. When it faced the Epée, the colonists launched the compartment, a giant metal box holding hundreds of tons of crystal.

It flew for a minute, as the base was still relatively far away from the ship.

"Much obliged. Please wait a tic," said the freebooter with a smile.

He sent a probebot flying to intercept the compartment. The device was more former than latter, not much more than some sharp sensors in a sphere connected to arm-like grasping tools and propelled by rockets. The probebot met the box and held on to the side with the arms, telescoping a metal proboscis out of the sphere chassis and connecting the scanner to the box. It scanned for a few seconds as the probebot's thrusters fired, slowing both to a near stop.

Standard cargo box: 50x50x20 meters, composed of space-steel alloys, propelled by SchemaSort official cargo rockets. Contents: 250.23 tons of high-quality flammable commercial incendiary materials.

After a moment, the freebooter spoke. "So, what's group of nice civvy frontiersmen doing with hundreds of tons of Splamo! in a box meant to contain looty?"

He then instructed the probebot to fly the shipment back to the orbital slowly.

Someone finally radioed him back. "Sorry! Er… must've gotten the wrong shipment last time. The military, y'know, not that reliable."

The freebooter chortled. "Well, that's to be expected. Now send me the crystal-box or I'll blow your bliddly bollocks off."

They complied, and he jollily shot the explosives-box at an angle so it collided with one of the far points of the axle, lighting up the void around. Disappointingly, it had contained less Splamo! than he expected, and didn't even damage the actual torus. So he then proceeded to fire his laser at the weak points of the base a few times before letting loose his EMP cannon. Alive or dead, it would still be the last time this band of peoneers doubted the accuracy and perception of an ex-privateer… loose cannon.

"Just a favor returned!" he laughed through the comm. "By-the-by, colonials!"

And he warpjumped at the exact moment two military battleships abruptly appeared in the system.

But not before the military Rapier cloaked right behind him transmitted a germ.

OOOOO

"Blast it, what the hell are your boys doing?" demanded Master Sorenson.

The members of the secret ops force sketched out the plan, and he shook his head.

"This is the sort of dissembled, high-tech crap job that would never have worked in the Belt Conflict," he said, displaying his age.

"We understand that, elder. But this is time for grand discoveries."

The older man snorted and drank more coffeehol. "Each new generation says that. I do not forget so easily."

"Think of all of your cousins and nephews who died from the attacks."

"I know. I also think of the late shipments. I give you full authority within my commissioned lands."

"Thank you, sir. We shall avenge your kinsmen."

"You'd better!"

OOOOO

It's pretty much impossible to locate anything within hyperspace by the human eye, but the freebooter ex-privateer loose cannon could tell there was something wrong.

A man of impeccable care, his massive array of sensors and gyros required the consistency of his onboard computer, or his scan-'em and stun-'em tactics would be only half intact, or less. It wasn't until five minutes into hyperspace that the tronics started going haywire, the letters and figures scrolling erratically and his screen even sparking a few times. But before that, he knew he had been set up.

_It's **purple**_.

Hyperspace, as any decent spacefarer knows, looks no more than a tunnel of love on noxes. A hallucination-seeker's ultimate fantasy, one can see billions upon billions of spatial phenomena up, down, right, left, and in your face protruding from a hyperspace canal. And behind it, like an old tablecloth studded with billions upon billions of holes, is space, black as a penguin in a tuxedo.

Except now it's purple.

Which meant that someone somehow macked their way into his computer, re-routed his destination, and caused him to diffuse their way, against the will of his previous plans. With his hyperdrive now incorrectly calibrated, his hyperspace route was all screwy. Warpjumping's a complicated mode of movement. But if someone manages to take you over, then they're probably someone quite considerable.

The freebooter shrugged. If it's Colonial Authority, then finally. He's been willing to fight the military leadlegs ever since the day he took out their affiliated transport and their squadron of Skeans. New and maneuverable, his eye patch! They died as easily as any slow-stomached ship from the inner core.

He smacked the computer a few times, but it refused to budge. He cursed, but fortunately he had back-up systems for his sensors, and could even check his engine and weapons status with them. The worst thing about it was that whatever 'jacked him was powerful enough to utterly defeat his flamewall and heroware programs.

The Epée materialized in the middle of a patch of nothingness, just as he planned. But he wasn't in the Deneb System, he gathered once his computer unexpectedly stopped seizing up and told him something useful. The closest object was a dim red star the size of a fist below his ship. Using that and other stellar observations, the computer extrapolated his current location: Not on the Charts.

A grin. This was definitely military territory. A special invitation, just for him? He wondered which branch of the Unholy Triad was hosting him. An uncharted star could mean that GAMDC owned this land somewhere beyond the frontier, or maybe it was under the dominion of the Colonial Authority- the actual military.

The sensors picked up an object in flight in the distance. It appeared for a moment, then flickered invisibly.

Or maybe it's Secret Ops.

ASM was on, but the freebooter could hear nothing. That meant the ship could either mask its special spatial signals- impossible, period. Or it could fly fast enough to escape detection. Certainly ASM choked up and died whenever anything involving hyperspace was involved.

He turned up the ASM so that he could hear his own ship moving forward slowly, the sound of a light gale as he flew at a hundred km. a second. Nothing. He boosted up the aural synthesizers up enough so he could hear the star moving in the distance, a sound like waves crashing into hot lava, steam rising. Nothing. He cranked it up so loud the very stars in the area joined in the chorus, shrieks of steam sizzling until they became static, the sensors unable to satisfy his high requisites.

Nothi- _something_.

The freebooter had heard everything, from the great rolling military fleets out for bug-hunting to the metal-on-ice screeching of the AFBs themselves. This was different. It whistled through the air, whooshing like an arrow with an odd reverb effect following the initial sound, an audio afterimage. It came from no distinct location, but from all around the Epée, appearing faintly, calling out for a few seconds, and disappearing.

The freebooter activated his gunsat and launched a probebot. It scanned the surrounding area, and was blasted into smithereens. Its owner shrugged. This at least told him where the enemy ship was.

He flew towards the spot, the red star growing larger and larger until it was the size of a basketball. Then the Adjudicator appeared.

It was an eerie ship, post-industrialist design, all covered in ugly angles. From above it looked like an asterisk, its main body and wings forming a cross, while four bizarre metal tubes protruding out from the cross in the shape of an x. Some rumored they were exhaust ports, other they were more rockets. Few have ever seen the experimental craft, and there were no recorded tales of anyone actually facing one in combat. Secret Ops and deep black status and all that.

The renegade snorted. "Adjudicator." A self-important, sanctimonious name, like any of the military's so-called superfighters. The _Sword_-class fighters and bombers were as potentially dangerous- it only depended on the pilot and the configuration.

Of course, those were the two things the Unholy Triad specialized in- along with control of all of the resources, the ability to mold colonial society into its own liking, legitimacy granted by the Earth powers, the inclination to actually govern the mess, and scads and scads of credits, military superiority was what made GAMDC, Secret Ops, and the Colonial Authority and its military (what's the difference) the rulers of the outer universe.

But to the freebooter- Sagacity, Vindicator, or Adjudicator, superfighters were just merc ships, except the mercs _were_ the highest bidders with the highest kills. This ship may be speedy, but its shiny-sleekness belied its soulless, corporate-manufactured origin. It would prove to be no match for a pilot of heart and courage, no matter his legal status. The freebooter locked on to the superfighter and gave chase.

He immediately found out that his EMP couldn't do any damage- even with its heavy shields down, the armor would reflect such a pulse. Ray and particle guns had little effect as well on the actual craft, though they tore through the shields. So he would have to rely on explosives. How crude.

The Adjudicator, black as space, flew away from the star, the two rear lines of the "x" blinking blue. The freebooter marveled at its maneuverability, and its aft weapon's surprising accuracy. Probably computer guided, which was cheating, or at least expensive. Automated weapons, such as the gunsat, tended to rely on overwhelming force rather than hitting the correct weak spot. The Adjudicator, on the other hand, quickly brought down the Epée's front shielding and almost hit the cockpit.

_Unidentifiable Spacefaring Object??? Not recognized by official Colonial Authority database!_

The renegade fought back bitterly, no longer amused. He twisted and rolled, firing explosives. The enemy was agile enough to avoid his wasted torpedoes, so he focused on the gunsat and the missiles. The Adjudicator hurt him greatly, but didn't put up a full fight- he could have been space dust in the first five minutes had the Secret Ops pilot put out his full force in a real duel.

The freebooter realized this as they flew farther from the star. He also saw that the Adjudicator was leading him on to go faster and faster. So he decelerated, spun, and flew away from the superfighter. The freebooter thought himself wily enough to escape a military trap. He was mistaken.

Another craft appeared out of hyperspace in front of him. It completely blocked his view of the sun. Incidentally, the sun was only the size of a Christmas light by that point. But size was not what mattered.

The ship was red, scaly, almost swollen-looking. It was the beyond the horrors of the human imagination, an almost organic-looking behemoth that gibbered softly into the ASM. It looked like a magma octopus with its tentacles removed mating with a bagpipe that had no pipes but instead was made of rock and crystal. It gleamed on wavelengths that dipped into the visual range, shimmering its borders with unholy light.

_A true Alien vessel._

This was no saucer, not even a star cruiser. This was something of a different class entirely, nay, of an entire school. This ship… or was it a creature itself? was no bigger than a schooner that could fit twenty passengers and compartments of goods, yet seemed to be continuously growing in place. Odd lights glinted from the crystals, which expanded and deflated. _Control of crystal_? The renegade stared at it, then rotated sharply and flew away.

It did not avail him. The first shot penetrated his already-weakened shields and froze his ship. Ironically, he was now facing the same suffering he had inflicted on his victims. His navigation, weapons systems, and precious sensors all gave out. Only by sheer luck was he partly protected by his gunsat, which had been slightly in the way when the blast hit. It now hung uselessly in space, flung out of orbit of his ship and left hundreds of kilometers behind him. The renegade shrugged. When he got out of this, he could always buy or snatch another. If he got out.

Along with life support, his hyperdrive was miraculously on-line. With a pull of the lever, he warpjumped into the closest system on his list of safe spots.

OOOOO

Decatur was once again in search of work. His last job to infiltrate a pirate nation's socnet and do recon was easy enough, and he had even managed to bring out the nation from within simply by destroying its capital. Of course, the pirate nation was a very minor one the size of one half-settled province on an insignificant moon, and its gov't worked out of an abandoned warehouse, but he was still rewarded… appropriately. Now he was out to find another brigand to bring to justice.

Conveniently, the renegade suddenly appeared out of hyperspace, dazed and bleeding fuel recklessly.

Decatur immediately scanned the ship. It was a pretty Epée that had been badly smashed up was all that he could register. The only other helpful fact was that it belonged to a former privateer, now a freebooter.

He shrugged. A scoundrel's a scoundrel. He gave a quick chase, shot it several times with his laser. The soon-wreck fired back with rear cannons, but Decatur's newly upgraded shields protected him.

The freebooter damned his luck and launched homing missiles. Why, oh why did he have to wander into a pirate killer on the frontier? In any other circumstance the merc would be toasted, but he just had to meet him on a very bad day. But no matter, it wouldn't last for long, he thought. There was still enough fuel for another warpjump. Then he would be free of the military, this greeyaz, and that… thing.

An icy hold gripped his heart as he fumbled with the lever. He wanted to pull it, knew that it would be escape ready for him, but… he couldn't do it. The picture of the Alien ship was all he could see, the memory of that awful abomination with tendrils protruding from a heavy carapace, crystals growing on it like mold, deadly blasts delivered from its orifices…

His hand stumbled, and found that he could no longer see the screen. The image of the craft burned into his mind's eye. His contorted hands wrenched at the console. Just as Decatur developed the final blow, striking his reactor and incapacitating his ship, he tore out the eye beneath his patch and slumped against the console.

The pirate-killer approached the loose cannon's ship warily. The once proud raiding vessel was devastated. The cargo box filled with crystal was still intact, however. Sometime before fleeing into Decatur's waiting gun sights, the freebooter had forgotten his capital rule: always leave what you can't carry fast enough.

Five military vessels arrived from hyperspace. Two were huge dreadnoughts flanked by three battleships. They surveyed the area and contacted Decatur.

"This is Captain Riviera of the Boundless. That craft belongs to a dangerous renegade and enemy to the public's well-being. You can confirm that by querying for his ship on JobNet…"

Decatur nodded impatiently. "Yes, I know that already," he said to the cold-stared, inhumanly stony captain.

"We are prepared to award you a reward given your initiative and effort in aiding the public's interest," continued the military man. A moment later he added, "Payment completed. May the stars guide you."

Decatur logged online to check his account, which was up again. "Thank you. He's all yours, gents," he said and left the system.

The privateer's crystal was returned to the coffers of the commissioned outpost. The Epée was dismantled as scrap. The freebooter was hauled out muttering softly to himself, and taken to a Secret Ops prison.


End file.
